K*'"      -■   . 


THE 


CLASSIFICATION  OF 
RELIGIONS 


BY 


CHICAGO 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

LONDON  AGENTS 

KEGAN  PAUL.  TRENCH.  TRUBNER  &  CO.,  Ltd. 


ISWiffMM 


mismfom 


snmiiiii 


THE 

CLASSIFICATION  OF 
RELIGIONS 


DIFFERENT   METHODS,   THEIR   ADVANTAGES 
AND    DISADVANTAGES 


DUREN  J.  H.  WARD,  PH.  D. 

I' 
(leipsic) 


^      OF    THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 

s£4LIF0RN^ 


CHICAGO 
THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

LONDON  AGENTS 

KEGAN  PAUL,  TRENCH,  TRUBNER  &  CO.,  LTD. 

1909 


3L3SV 


Copyright  by 

The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. 

1909 


PREFACE. 

EVERY  analysis  of  religion  proceeds  from  assumptions  which 
when  written  out  or  expounded  become  a  philosophy.  Hence 
in  the  pages  which  follow  we  have  an  epitomization  of  some  of  the 
leading  philosophies  of  religion.  The  thoughtful  study  of  these 
analyses  or  classifications  must  surely  lead  to  a  better  understanding 
of  the  further  problem,  viz.,  of  the  nature  of  religion  itself.  Each 
historic  religion  furnishes  an  example  of  some  phase  of  the  re- 
ligious nature  and  tendency  of  mankind;  and  comparative  analysis 
shows  how  incompletely  the  fulness  of  religion,  as  we  are  coming 
to  see  it,  has  been  represented  by  each  of  them.  With  the  vast 
accumulation  of  facts  before  us,  it  is  plain  that  no  other  feature  of 
human  life  has  been  so  dominating.  Taken  up  in  the  modern  spirit, 
no  other  study  will  repay  the  effort  expended  with  so  great  an  ex- 
tension and  illumination  of  view. 

DuREN  J.  H.  Ward. 
Denver^  Colorado. 


197985 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

PAGX 

Introduction i 

Objective  Illustrations :  Their  Sphere  and  Importance I 

Some  Recent  Classifications  of  Religions 2 

A.  Classifications  Based  on  Dogmatic  Assumptions 3 

B.  Classifications  from  Objective  Characteristics 8 

I.  According  to  the  Nature  of  the  Objects  Worshiped 8 

11.  According  to  the  Worshipers'  Estimates  of  Their  Deities. — Sir  John 

Lubbock II 

III.  According  to  the  Part  Played  by  Man  in  Their  Development. — His- 

torical Method 12 

1.  Prof.  W.  D.  Whitney 12 

2.  Dr.  A.  M.  Fairbairn 13 

3.  Prof.  C.  P.  Tiele 17 

IV.  According  to  Their  Usual  Names,  Locations,  and  Numbers  of  Ad- 

herents.— Geographical  and  Statistical  Method 32 

1.  Geographical   Distribution 33 

(i)  About  1880  A.  D 33 

(2)  About  1500  A.  D 35 

(3)  About  A.  D 36 

(4)  About  400  to  500  B.  C 37 

2.  Statistics 38 

(i)  From  T.  W.  Rhys  Davids 42 

(2)  From  Justus  Perthes  Geographischer  Anstalt 42 

(3)  G.  Droysen's  Historischer  Handatlas 43 

(4)  Meyer's  Hand-Lexikon 43 

(5)  Appleton's  American  Cyclopedia  (Annual) 44 

C.  Classifications  Based  on  Philosophies  of  Religion  (Subjective). — Prof. 

Otto   Pfleiderer 45 

D.  'Classifications  Based  on  Racial  Relationships. — Genealogical  Method.  . .  53 
I.  According  to  Linguistic  Affinity. — Prof.  F.  Max  Miiller 53 

n.  According  to  Ethnological  Relationships  and  Historical  Connections. 

— A  New  Classification 64 

Outlines  of  Inquiries  for  a  Historico-Ethnical  Study  of  Religions 'JZ 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

INTRODUCTION. 

Objective  Illustrations :  Their  Sphere  and  Importance, 

THERE  is  an  old  proverb  which  says:  "Order  is  the 
first  law  of  Heaven/'  and  the  consensus  of  men  has 
long  ago  decided  that  the  laws  of  Heaven  should  be  the 
laws  of  earth.  To  labor  without  some  law  or  system  is  to 
fore-ordain  fruitless  result,  although  to  be  always  order- 
ing, or  to  be  tied  to  a  system,  is  no  whit  better.  The  one 
is  lawless  disregard  of  just  observances;  the  other  is  self- 
enforced  slavery  to  imaginary  needs  and  requirements  or 
to  principles  held  in  exaggerated  esteem.  Somewhere 
between  these  lines  lies  a  successful  mean.  System  and 
classification  are  valuable,  if  they  are  used  only  as  sugges- 
tion. They  must  never  shape  the  facts,  but  the  facts 
must  shape  them.  Facts  are  many-sided  and  have  many 
relations.  No  system  or  classification  can  do  more  than 
illustrate  some  oi  these.  If  it  does  this,  it  has  an  important 
value.  If  it  cannot  do  this,  it  is  valueless.  If  other  phases 
and  relations  are  to  be  suggested,  another  classification  is 
necessary.  Only  shortsightedness  will  insist  on  the  suffi- 
ciency of  one  arrangement.  Different  purposes  must  have 
their  different  methods.  When  system  in  the  presentation 
of  complex  or  abstract  thought  takes  the  form  of  classi- 
fications which  may  appeal  to  the  eye,  it  has  incalculable 
value.    Nearly  every  topic  can  by  the  exercise  of  a  little 


2  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

ingenuity  and  energy  be  illustrated  in  an  objective  man- 
ner in  which  the  interest  may  be  heightened  and  the  im- 
pression made  more  vivid  and  lasting.  The  justification 
and  importance  of  such  an  attempt  lie  in  the  nature  of  our 
thought,  so  large  a  part  of  which  is  ordered  in  terms  of 
space  and  time.  When  the  eye  can  be  brought  to  the  aid 
of  the  imaging  faculty  a  success  may  often  be  gained  in 
the  grasping  of  a  thought  which  would  otherwise  be  a  fail- 
ure. Again,  when  a  map,  a  diagram,  or  analytic  chart 
can  be  brought  before  the  sight,  not  only  are  the  above 
results  accomplished,  but  that  most  important  end  of  all 
education  may  be  aided  as  in  no  other  way,  viz.,  the  broad- 
ening of  the  mind,  since  in  this  way  the  scope  of  a  subject 
and  the  internal  and  external  relationships  may  be  seen 
at  a  glance  in  their  wholeness  and  fulness.  Indeed,  a  good 
classification  may  do  more  in  the  way  of  suggestion  and 
further  stimulation  for  a  susceptible  mind  than  the  most 
detailed  explanation  of  the  facts  in  a  prosier  way.  For 
such  reasons  as  these,  the  subjects  we  are  here  considering 
will  be  interspersed  frequently  with  devices  of  various  sorts 
helping  to  make  less  the  tediousness  of  the  recital  of  facts 
and  aiding,  it  is  hoped,  towards  an  increase  of  interest  and 
a  broader  understanding. 

Some  Recent  Classifications  of  Religions, 

The  subject  of  Religion  is  exceptionally  susceptible  of 
classification.  In  recent  times  it  has  been  often  and  in 
various  ways  attempted :  sometimes  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  objects  of  worship,  sometimes  from  historical  se- 
quences and  characteristics,  sometimes  from  certain  philo- 
sophical standpoints  or  to  illustrate  certain  underlying  phil- 
osophical principles,  and  sometimes  from  an  incongruous 
mixture  of  different  principles.  The  various  methods  of 
classifications,  so  far  as  I  have  met  them,  fall  severally 
under  one  of  the  four  following  headings: 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  J 

A.  Classifications  from  certain  preconceived  assump- 
tions or  standards  of  authority  based  on  philosophical  or 
theological  dogma; 

B.  Classifications  from  external  characteristics  of  the 
religions,  i.  e.,  from  the  character  of  their  individual,  ob- 
jective features  and  beliefs,  or  their  mere  names  and  num- 
ber of  adherents; 

C.  Classifications  from  the  subjective  side  based  on  a 
psychology  of  the  subject,  i.  e.,  on  the  internal  character- 
istics ; 

D.  Classifications  from  racial  relationships  and  from 
actually  traceable  mutual  historical  influences  (including 
linguistic  and  other  genealogical  schemes). 

All  of  these  methods  of  grouping  (even  those  under  A) 
have  their  value,  often  a  very  great  one.  They  only  over- 
step their  province  when  they  claim  to  be  the  sole  legitimate 
method  or  even  the  best  method.  They  can  at  most  do 
what  it  is  possible  for  a  classification  to  do,  viz.,  illustrate 
a  certain  general  phase,  relationship,  tendency,  etc.  Each 
must  in  the  nature  of  the  case  omit  the  special  advantages 
of  the  others ;  yet  through  all,  the  general  character  of  the 
subject  may  be  seen,  just  as  one  can  see  and  recognize  the 
same  landscape  from  different  points  of  view,  while  in 
each  new  standpoint  we  get  new  and  otherwise  impossible 
impressions.  He  will  know  it  best  who  is  at  pains  to  view 
it  from  all  the  available  points.  So  in  the  study  of  religions, 
the  most  varied  views  should  be  most  welcome,  so  long  as 
they  are  not  partial,  overdrawn,  or  fantastically  colored. 
Only  by  various  classifications  and  methods  of  study  is  it 
possible  to  bring  out  the  manifoldness  of  the  great  idea. 

A.  CLASSIFICATIONS  BASED  ON  DOGMATIC  ASSUMPTIONS. 

Under  this  heading  may  in  general  be  placed  all  classi- 
fications which  have  occurred  in  Christendom  down  to 
quite  recent  times.    This  holds  true  of  both  the  most  con- 


4  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

servative  and  liberal  writers.  Religions  were  of  two  clas- 
ses :  true  and  false,  Christianity  was  true,  all  others  ( in- 
cluding its  parent  Judaism)  were  false;  and  to  bring  out 
the  opprobrium  of  the  contrast  most  fully  the  term  "Heath- 
enism" was  applied  to  the  extra-Christian  world.  The 
Jews  would  have  dubbed  them  "Gentiles";  the  Greeks, 
"Barbarians."  If  there  was  any  apparent  truth  among 
the  "heathen"  it  would  be  found  in  the  end  to  be  untrue, 
or  it  was  claimed  that  evil  was  so  mixed  with  it  as  to  render 
its  effects  wholly  bad.  Neither  in  doctrine  or  cultus  had 
Christendom  anything  to  learn  from  Heathendom.  To 
wicked  priest-craft  and  to  the  Devil  was  assigned  the  origin 
of  all  its  institutions.  They  took  advantage  of  the  fallen 
sinful  condition  of  man,  buried  him  with  erroneous  doc- 
trines, and  bound  him  in  slavery  to  false  worship  and  de- 
basing superstitious  practices.  (Of  course  the  writers 
themselves  were  members  of  the  true.) 

A  second  theory  on  this  basis  having  the  same  meaning 
but  couched  in  different  terms,  was  that  which  classed 
religions  as  natural  and  revealed."^  Yet  in  Christendom 
this  was  an  advance  on  the  former  in  two  ways:  first  it 
enlarged  the  sphere  of  exclusiveness  so  that  now  both  Juda- 
ism and  Christianity  were  included  on  the  side  of  revealed 
religions,  while  all  others  were  invented  or  natural.  Then 
again  the  terms  of  description  and  contrast  were  milder, 
although  it  was  yet  implied  that  the  former  were  from 
God  and  the  others  from  man  (the  Devil  not  receiving 
quite  so  large  a  share  of  credit).  The  natural  religions 
however  were  in  no  way  sufficient  for  man's  needs.  He 
had  sunken  from  an  original  state  of  bliss  and  innocence 
to  so  low  a  condition  that  supernatural  Divine  interposition 


*  It  must  be  observed,  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  adherents  of 
each  religion,  all  the  others  are  "false"  and  "natural"  while  theirs  is  "true"  and 
"revealed."  Hence  the  religion  that  should  stand  on  the  one  side  over  against 
the  others  in  the  contrast  of  the  legitimate  against  the  illegitimate,  would  de- 
pend entirely  on  the  birth-place  of  the  classifier. 


THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS.  5 

was  necessary  to  prevent  his  utter  ruin.  The  fatal  con- 
sequences of  sin  could  in  no  other  way  be  counteracted. 
Hence  we  observe,  the  classing  of  religions  was  the  outline 
of  the  theological  or  rather  doctrinal  attitude  toward  them. 
Theologians  resting  their  faith  on  Church  dogma  could  of 
course  have  no  other  view.  Hence  even  the  most  liberal 
of  them  must  hold  this  general  attitude.  James  Foster  in 
a  sermon  on  "The  Advantages  of  a  Revelation/'  speaking 
of  the  condition  of  the  world  at  the  birth  of  Christ,  says : 
"Just  notions  of  God  were,  in  general,  erased  from  the 
minds  of  men.  His  worship  was  debased  and  polluted,  and 
scarce  any  traces  could  be  discerned  of  the  genuine  and 
immutable  religion  of  nature.''  Here  is  an  unusually  lib- 
eral view  of  the  so-called  natural  religion  for  a  man  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  yet  it  contains  the  denial  of  even  the 
comforts  which  this  might  have  afforded  to  the  men  of 
those  times.  From  men  of  philosophical  tendencies  the 
attitude  was  substantially  the  same.  This  could  not  be 
otherwise  from  the  belief  which  men  universally  held  re- 
garding the  moral  and  religious  state  of  primitive  man. 
They  one  and  all  believed  him  to  have  been  originally  per- 
fect, they  observed  him  to  be  far  from  that  now.  He  must 
have  been  degraded.  They  read  of  things  in  history  re- 
pulsive to  their  feelings  and  unseen  in  their  circle  of  ex- 
perience. They  generalized  this  into  the  universal  condi- 
tion of  the  times  alluded  to.  Distance  in  time  and  racial 
dislike  gave  the  imagination  scope,  and  the  consequence 
was  a  theory  anything  but  philosophical.  John  Locke, 
( 1 632- 1 704)  one  of  the  greatest  if  not  the  greatest  English 
mind  of  his  day,  referring  to  the  times  of  the  beginning  of 
the  Christian  era,  says  in  his  "Reasonableness  of  Christian- 
ity" :  "Men  had  given  themselves  up  into  the  hands  of  their 
priests,  to  fill  their  heads  with  false  notions  of  the  Deity, 
and  their  worship  with  foolish  rites,  as  they  pleased;  and 
what  dread  or  craft  once  began,  devotion  soon  made  sacred, 


0  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

and  religion  immutable/'  "In  this  state  of  darkness  and 
ignorance  of  the  true  God,  vice  and  superstition  held  the 
world."  Heathendom,  all  and  entire,  morally  and  relig- 
iously was  eschewed.  Some  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  clas- 
sical, authors  were  good  to  read  as  literature,  and  a  few 
writers  upheld  the  study  of  Greek  philosophy,  notably  the 
"Cambridge  Platonists,''  while  the  Logic  of  Aristotle  was 
generally  in  good  repute. 

But  I  must  mention  an  opinion  or  two  from  Church 
history,  that  we  may  better  see  the  prevalent  teaching  of 
the  investigators  and  observe  a  further  basis  for  this  sort 
of  classification.  Johann  Lorenz  von  Mosheim  (1694- 
1755),  one  of  the  most  widely  read  and  influential  writers 
during  the  latter  half  of  the  i8th  century  and  the  first  half 
of  the  19th,  and  a  man  revered  for  his  great  learning 
and  sincerity  by  the  general  use  of  his  text-books  during 
a  hundred  years,  says  concerning  this  period  in  the  first 
chapter  of  his  "Church  History" :  "All  nations  of  the  world, 
except  the  Jews,  were  plunged  in  the  grossest  superstitions. 
Some  nations,  indeed,  went  beyond  others  in  impiety  and 
absurdity,  but  all  stood  charged  with  irrationality  and 
gross  stupidity  in  matters  of  religion."  "The  worship  of 
these  deities  consisted  in  ceremonies,  sacrifices,  and  pray- 
ers. The  ceremonies  were,  for  the  most  part,  absurd  and 
ridiculous,  and  throughout  debasing,  obscene,  and  cruel. 
The  prayers  were  truly  insipid  and  void  of  piety,  both  in 
their  form  and  matter."  "The  whole  pagan  system  had 
not  the  least  efficacy  to  produce  and  cherish  virtuous  emo- 
tions in  the  soul;  because  the  gods  and  goddesses  were 
patterns  of  vice,  the  priests  bad  men,  and  the  doctrines 
false."  (Quoted  by  J.  F.  Clarke,  Ten  Great  Religions, 
2 1  St  ed.  B.  1884,  PP-  5-6.) 

A  similar  picture  of  the  period  spoken  of  may  be  found 
in  Geikie's  Life  and  Words  of  Christ,    If  space  permitted, 

1  should  illustrate  this  attitude  from  writers  who  construct 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  7 

their  classification  of  present  religions  on  this  same  basis. 
And  yet  it  is  so  general  an  assumption  that  we  need  not 
ask  to  have  it  illustrated.  The  theory  usually  urged  for 
sending  and  sustaining  Christian  missionaries  in  various 
parts  of  the  world  is  an  ever  re-current  witness  of  it.  More- 
over, if  one  is  looking  for  the  foundations  of  things,  he  may 
find  this  assumption  at  the  bottom  of  a  vast  amount  of  the 
religious  literature  of  our  times.  Without  further  com- 
ment upon  it,  I  will  add  a  few  lines  from  Dr.  J.  F.  Clarke 
(Ten  Great  Religions,  p.  7)  who  in  speaking  of  this  atti- 
tude toward  the  "ethnic"  religions  says: 

"Apply  a  similar  theory  to  any  other  human  institu- 
tion, and  how  patent  is  its  absurdity!  Let  a  republican 
contend  that  all  other  forms  of  government — the  patri- 
archal system,  government  by  castes,  the  feudal  system, 
absolute  and  limited  monarchies,  oligarchies,  and  aristoc- 
racies— are  wholly  useless  and  evil,  and  were  the  result  of 
statecraft  alone,  with  no  root  in  human  nature  or  the  needs 
of  man.  Let  one  maintain  that  every  system  of  law  (except 
our  own)  was  an  invention  of  lawyers  for  private  ends. 
Let  one  argue  in  the  same  way  about  medicine,  and  say 
that  this  is  a  pure  system  of  quackery,  devised  by  physi- 
cians in  order  to  get  a  support  out  of  the  people  for  doing 
nothing.  We  should  at  once  reply  that,  though  error  and 
ignorance  may  play  a  part  in  all  these  institutions,  they 
cannot  be  based  on  error  and  ignorance  only.  Nothing 
which  has  not  in  it  some  elements  of  use  can  hold  its  posi- 
tion in  the  world  during  so  long  a  time  and  over  so  wide  a 
range.  It  is  only  reasonable  to  say  the  same  of  heathen 
or  ethnic  religions ....  Unless  they  contained  more  of  good 
than  evil,  they  could  not  have  kept  their  place.  They  par- 
tially satisfied  a  great  hunger  of  the  human  heart.  They 
exercised  some  restraint  on  human  wilfulness  and  passion. 
They  have  directed,  however  imperfectly,  the  human  con- 
science toward  the  right.'' 


3 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 


B.   CLASSIFICATIONS  FROM  OBJECTIVE  CHARACTERISTICS. 

/.  According  to  the  Nature  of  the  Objects  Worshiped. 

This  is  the  most  general  classification  of  those  inclined 
to  be  scholarly  and  broad.  It  not  only  has  numerous  rep- 
resentatives in  books,  but  is  probably  the  only  one  that  can 

C  Non-Religious  Peoples,  or  A-Theism. 


Fetichism 


r  Negroes  of  Central  Africa 
"I   Some  S.  Amer.  Indians 


TOTEMIILM 


Shamanism 


Animism 


Polytheism 


{ 


Australians,  etc. 

N.  E.  Asiatic  Peoples 
N.  Amer.  Indians 
Some  Polynesians 
Ancient  Egyptians,  etc. 

Some  N.  Amer.  Indians 
"      N.  Asiaticans 

'*      Papuans,  Tamans,  New  Hebridians,  etc. 
"      Mohammedans,  etc. 

An  element  intermixed  in  the  religions  of  all  peoples 
but  especially  characteristic  of  Chinese,  Ancient  Greeks 
and  Romans. 

Greeks,  Romans,  and  Germans  of  Ancient  Times 
All  Ancient  Semites 
Ancient  Hindus 
Early  Chinese  and  Japanese 
Aztec-Toltecs 

(Indeed,  all  religions,  except  Christianity,  Mohammedan- 
ism, and  Judaism,  when  contrasted  with  Monotheism.) 

"  Persians  (best  representatives) 
Modern  Hindus  (in  certain  respects) 
Manichaeans  of  Middle  Ages, 
Some  Christian  and  Mohammedan  theories 

r  Jews  generally  since  prophetic  times 
Monotheism  "]   Higher  religious  conceptions  in  Ancient  India,  Modern 
^      Europe,  and  Mohammedan  lands 

Upanishad  and  Vedanta  Philosophers  of  India 

Lao-Tsze  of  China 

Eleatic  School  of  Greece 

Many  Modern  Mystics:  Bruno,  Eckhardt,  Bohme,  etc. 

Idealists:  Fichte,  Schelling,  Hegel,  etc. 

Realists:  Spinoza,  etc. 


Dualism 


Monism 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  9 

be  said  to  be  popular  among  those  classifications  that  de- 
serve respect  as  aspiring  to  be  scientific.  Several  of  its 
divisions  are  in  the  most  universal  circulation,  yet  not  all 
of  them  are  so  well  understood,  hence  I  shall  give  and  ex- 
plain them  more  fully  than  would  otherwise  be  necessary. 
(See  chart.) 

1.  Non-religious  Peoples,  if  there  be  such,  should  be 
mentioned  first.  Many  reputable  authorities  claim  to  have 
discovered  tribes  devoid  of  religious  ideas.  (  See  the  works 
of  Dr.  Monnat,  Sir  Samuel  Baker,  David  Livingstone, 
Sir  Messenger  Bradley,  and  Sir  John  Lubbock.)  The  testi- 
mony is  disputed  on  the  ground  of  its  incompleteness  and 
for  other  reasons,  hence  I  will  place  no  peoples  under  this 
topic.  (Buddhism  was  at  first  an  atheistic  religion — i.  e., 
in  any  of  the  usual  senses.) 

2.  Fetichism,  the  worship  of  simple  and  casually  se- 
lected objects  which  have  come  to  be  regarded  as  posses- 
sing in  some  way  a  superior  power,  such  as  stones,  bones, 
shells,  herbs,  bits  of  wood,  feathers,  weapons,  etc.  In  gen- 
eral, this  is  the  religious  condition  of  those  peoples  in  the 
lowest  stage  of  civilization,  or  the  so-called  "savage"  state. 

3.  Totemism  (or  Nature  Worship),  the  religious  re- 
gard of  objects  of  nature  in  a  somewhat  larger  and  less 
servile  way,  as  of  mountains,  rocks,  water,  rivers,  groves, 
trees,  animals  (serpents,  cattle,  etc.),  and,  in  higher  forms, 
the  heavens,  sun,  moon,  etc.  This  form  of  worship  is  found 
with  peoples  a  stage  higher  than  the  last. 

4.  Shamanism,  in  which  the  deities  are  of  the  most 
diverse  character,  including  the  Fetichistic,  Totemistic,  and 
polytheistic  orders ;  but  the  method  of  approaching  them  is 
through  magical  formulas,  incantations,  etc.,  the  perform- 
ance or  recital  of  which  is  believed  to  exercise  an  authority 
over  them.  If  properly  carried  out,  it  is  believed  to  extort 
from  them  the  fulfilment  of  the  applicant's  wishes,  whether 
these  be  temporal  present  needs  or  the  disclosure  of  future 


JO  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

events.  This  form  of  religion  is  thought  to  be  the  dom- 
inant characteristic  of  most  of  the  so-called  "barbarous 
nations." 

5.  Animism,  or  the  worship  of  ancestral  spirits,  is  the 
belief  that  the  soul  after  death  has  special  opportunities  for 
doing  good  or  evil  to  the  living,  and  hence  is  to  be  honored 
or  propitiated.  It  is  very  wide  spread  and  can  scarcely  be 
said  to  be  the  characteristic  form  of  any  stage  of  develop- 
ment. 

6.  Polytheism,  the  worship  of  many  gods.  This  is  a 
term  capable  of  covering  the  whole  range  of  religion  below 
monotheism,  but  which  is  best  used  to  designate  a  stage  in 
which  the  gods  are  not  longer  natural  objects,  but  entities 
or  spirits  in  or  independent  of  these.  It  is  the  character- 
istic of  the  religion  of  peoples  on  the  border  of  or  some- 
what advanced  in  civilization,  the  so-called  "civilized  peo- 
ples,'' as  distinguished  from  the  "enlightened"  above  and 
"savage"  below. 

7.  Dualism,  the  belief  in  two  deities,  one  benevolent  the 
other  malevolent,  the  form  of  religion  that  accounts  for  the 
good  and  the  evil  of  the  world  by  referring  each  to  a  su- 
preme cause  having  a  nature  in  accord  with  the  character 
of  its  creations. 

8.  Monotheism,  the  faith  that  one  all-wise,  all-good, 
and  almighty  being  alone  created,  guides  and  governs  the 
universe  for  ultimate  good  ends.  This  Being  is  regarded 
as  a  spirit  transcendent  to  or  over  against  the  world  of  his 
creation.  The  type  attained  by  the  great  majority  of  peo- 
ples in  the  most  enlightened  nations. 

9.  Monism,  the  view  that  the  universe  is  a  real  unity  in 
which  the  manifold  diversity  is  only  apparent;  that  the 
creating,  guiding  power  and  intelligence  is  immanent  in  it 
and  not  above  or  over  against  it ;  that  the  so-called  material 
and  spiritual  are  qualitatively  the  same  (by  one  school  all 
being  regarded  as  material,  by  another  as  spiritual,  and 


THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS.  II 

by  yet  others  the  whole  being  spoken  of  as  an  unknown 
essence).  This  division  has  no  representatives  among 
nations  or  special  peoples,  but  has  been  and  is  held  by 
various  individuals  and  schools  of  thought  in  various  ages 
and  various  parts  of  the  world.  It  embraces  wide  extremes, 
and  must  comprehend  most  of  those  included  under  the 
terms:  idealists,  phenomenalists,  materialists,  organicists, 
mystics,  spiritists,  etc. 

*       *       * 

It  will  be  observed  that  these  terms  are  none  of  them 
very  definite,  and  that  used  combinedly  in  a  classification 
they  are  loose.  Their  suggestiveness  at  best  is  somewhat 
vague,  and  without  care  is  apt  to  be  misleading,  since  it 
will  be  found  that  no  people  arranges  itself  exclusively 
under  one  of  these  headings,  but  that  all  of  the  varieties 
are  found  among  the  highest  nations,  while  even  the  lowest 
peoples  have  some  of  the  higher  elements.  Such  religions 
as  Confucianism  and  Buddhism,  having  the  most  numerous 
followings,  really  find  no  place  in  such  a  classification. 

//.  According  to  the  Worshipers'  Estimates  of  their 

Deities. 
Sir  John  Lubbock,  a  careful  student  of  ethnology  and 
an  investigator  who  has  much  to  say  worthy  of  hearing, 
objects  to  the  usual  classification  of  religions  according  to 
the  nature  of  the  objects  worshiped.  His  method  has  some- 
what of  originality,  though  not  more  exact  or  by  any  means 
so  difiPerent  from  the  method  he  refuses,  as  he  believed  it 
to  be.  He  proceeds  to  sort  them  over  on  the  principle  by 
which  the  deity  is  estimated  by  the  worshipers.  The  result 
is  a  division  of  seven  chief  types.  The  first  five  are  desig- 
nated by  terms  in  general  use,  the  other  two  having  no 
specific  name.  I  will  give  the  whole  for  what  they  may 
suggest.  (See  his  Origin  of  Civilization,  4th  ed.,  L.,  1882,. 
pp.  205-6.) 


12  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

1.  *'A-theism;  understanding  by  this  term  not  a  denial 
of  the  existence  of  a  Deity,  but  an  absence  of  any  definite 
ideas  on  the  subject." 

2.  '^Fetichism;  the  stage  in  which  man  supposes  he  can 
force  the  deities  to  comply  with  his  desires.'' 

3.  ''Nature-Worship  or  Totemism;  in  which  natural 
objects,  trees,  lakes,  stones,  animals,  etc.,  are  worshiped." 

4.  ''Shamanism;  in  which  the  superior  deities  are  far 
more  powerful  than  man,  and  of  a  different  nature.  Their 
place  of  abode  also  is  far  away,  and  accessible  only  to 
Shamans." 

5.  "Idolatry  or  Anthropomorphism;  in  which  the  gods 
take  still  more  completely  the  nature  of  men,  being,  how- 
ever, more  powerful.  They  are  still  amenable  to  persua- 
sion; they  are  a  part  of  nature,  and  not  creators.  They 
are  represented  by  images  or  idols." 

6.  "In  the  next  stage  the  deity  is  regarded  as  the  author, 
not  merely  a  part  of  nature.  He  becomes  for  the  first  time 
a  really  supernatural  being." 

7.  'The  last  stage  is  that  in  which  morality  is  associated 

with  religion." 

*       *       * 

This  classification  attempts  to  proceed  strictly  on  the 
basis  of  progress  in  the  development  of  religious  ideas. 
When  practically  applied,  it  is  not  less  confusing  than  the 
former,  and  is  equally  inadequate  to  define  the  character 
of  the  religion  of  any  given  people;  although  in  the  last 
two  divisions  it  makes  useful  discriminations. 

///.  According  to  the  Part  Played  by  Man  in  their  Devel- 
opment.— Historical  Method. 

I.  Prof.  W.  D.  Whitney,  the  celebrated  Sanskrit  scholar 
and  Orientalist  of  Yale  College,  has  instituted  the  classi- 
fication of  religions  into  National  and  Individual.  I  will 
let  him  explain  himself.     In  an  essay  entitled,  "On  the 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 


13 


So-called  Science  of  Religion/'  he  says :  "There  is  no  more 
marked  distinction  among  religions  than  the  one  we  are 
called  upon  to  make  between  a  race  religion — which,  like 
a  language,  is  the  collective  product  of  the  wisdom  of  a 
community,  the  unconscious  growth  of  generations^ — and 
a  religion  proceeding  from  an  individual  founder,  who,  as 
leading  representative  of  the  better  insight  and  feeling  of 
his  time  (for  otherwise  he  would  meet  with  no  success), 
makes  head  against  formality  and  superstition,  and  recalls 
his  fellowmen  to  sincere  and  intelligent  faith  in  a  new  body 
of  doctrines,  of  especially  moral  aspect,  to  which  he  himself 
gives  shape  and  coherence.  Of  this  origin  are  Zoroastrian- 
ism,  Mohammedanism,  Buddhism;  and,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  general  historian  of  religions,  whatever  differ- 
ence of  character  and  authority  he  may  recognize  in  its 
founder,  Christianity  belongs  in  the  same  class  with  them, 
as  being  an  individual  and  universal  religion,  growing  out 
of  one  that  was  limited  to  a  race." 


H 
"A 
W 

a, 
o 

> 

Q 

O  ^ 
'z  ^ 

<  c/i 
^^ 
fe  '^ 

CO   ^ 

<o 

O 


Spontaneous 
or  Natural    - 


Primitive  Naturalisms 


Transformed  Naturalisms  - 


Instituted 


Reformed  Natural, 


Early  Greeks 

"      Hindus 

'*      Teutons 

' '      Slavonians 
Polynesians 
Indians 
etc. 

Later  Greek  and  Roman 

Egyptian 

Ancient  Chinese 

etc. 

Mosaism 
Zoroastrianism 
Confucianism 
Taoism 


Buddhism 

Reformed  Spiritual "^   Mohammedanism 

Christianity 


{ 


2.  Dr.  Fairbairn  of  Scotland,  a  man  who  has  written 
and  lectured  considerably  on  the  comparative  study  of  re- 


14  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

ligions,  makes  his  classification  on  the  same  basis  as  that 
of  Professor  Whitney,  viz.,  from  the  part  man's  conscious 
and  individual  intentions  have  played  in  bringing  them  to 
the  condition  in  which  we  find  them  in  history.  (Studies 
in  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  and  History.)  His  terms 
are  different,  though  meaning  practically  the  same.  He 
further  subdivides  the  two  main  divisions,  and,  under  these, 
religions  are  cited  as  examples.     (See  Chart.) 

( 1 )  Spontaneous  or  Natural  Religions,  those  that  have 
grown  up  out  of  a  people  collectively,  e.  g.,  the  religion  of 
ancient  Greece.    These  he  further  subdivides  into : 

(a)  Primitive  NaturaHsms. 

(b)  Transformed  Naturalisms. 

(2)  Instituted  Religions,  or  those  which  have  their  or- 
igin in  some  great  personality,  e.  g..  Buddhism,  Zoroas- 
trianism,  Christianity,  Mohammedanism,  etc.  This  again 
is  of  two  kinds : 

(a)  Reformed  natural  religions, 

(b)  Reformed  spiritual  religions. 

Each  of  these  divisions,  he  claims,  shades  into  the  others. 
Nature's  gradations  are  too  fine  for  our  subtlest  distinc- 
tions. The  naturalisms  bring  forth  the  historical ;  the  in- 
stituted presupposes  the  spontaneous. 

This  classification  too,  like  the  others,  calls  attention 
to  certain  facts  which  deserve  notice.  When  not  too  care- 
fully scrutinized  the  divisions  offer  useful  intimations. 
There  is  a  sense  in  which  certain  religions  are  more  spon- 
taneous than  others,  or  than  the  same  are  at  later  times. 
The  consciousness  of  man  was  not  so  active  in  early  as  in 
later  times.  Moreover  the  simpler  and  less  conscious 
growths  must  have  come  to  take  on  crystallized  forms  be- 
fore the  reforming  recreative  spirits  could  be  operative, 
and  these  efforts  of  the  reformers  and  founders  have  again 
a  freshness  and  spontaneity  which  the  same  religion  in 
later  times  does  not  possess.    Indeed,  the  latter  is  then  to 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  1$ 

the  former  as  an  "instituted"  to  a  "spontaneous''  religion. 
Hence  we  perceive  that  in  the  end  the  division  is  only  a 
very  relative  one,  i.  e.,  that  it  has  no  intrinsic  basis  in  the 
nature  of  religions  themselves,  but  only  applies  to  temporal 
changes  coming  about  sooner  or  later  in  the  process  of  all 
religious  development.  Nor  have  the  remarks  "growing 
up  out  of  the  people  collectively"  and  "originating  in  some 
great  personality,"  any  more  than  an  intimative  signifi- 
cance. They  are  not  divisions  which  correspond  literally 
to  the  facts.  As  to  the  first,  it  is  only  the  darkness  which 
hovers  over  the  history  of  nations  in  early  times  that  en- 
ables us  to  speak  of  spontaneous  developments  unaided  by 
great  personalities,  if  humanity  was  governed  by  the  same 
general  laws  then  that  it  has  been  within  historic  times 
(and  we  have  no  ground  to  assume  otherwise).  We  must 
believe  that  compared  with  the  rest  of  their  contemporary 
fellowmen,  there  have  every  now  and  then  lived  in  the 
world  those  great  personalities  which  set  in  motion  certain 
influences  relatively,  though  not  entirely,  new.  And  this 
leads  me  to  say  of  the  second  remark,  viz.,  that  about 
certain  religions  "originating  in  great  personalities,"  that 
these  great  personalities  are  only  in  a  very  qualified  sense 
their  originators.  They  are  possessed  of  a  broader,  deeper 
consciousness  which  takes  up  into  itself  the  facts  or  light 
of  their  age  better  and  more  thoroughly  than  others ;  they 
see  more  plainly  and  clearly  the  way  the  experiences  of 
mankind  point;  they  draw  more  faithfully  and  truly  the 
higher  inductions  of  their  times:  hence  they  become  to 
others  the  apparent  originators,  in  some  perhaps  super- 
natural way,  of  great  ideas  and  religions.  To  themselves 
and  to  those  who  can  appreciate  with  them  this  fuller  con- 
sciousness and  those  more  farreaching  inductions,  they  are 
not  more  a  mystery  than  the  rest  of  life's  experience.  It  is 
only  to  the  mass  of  smaller  minds  that  they  appear  origi- 


l6  THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS. 

nators  in  that  absolute  sense,  or  that  they  come  indeed 
later  to  be  deified. 

The  remarks  which  are  here  passed  are  applicable  alike 
to  the  two  presentations  of  this  basis  of  classifying  relig- 
ions. The  classification  is  suggestive  and  helpful,  but  it 
is  a  mistake  to  suppose  it  either  deeply  grounded  or  final. 

After  writing  the  above  my  attention  was  called  to  the 
fact  that  Prof.  Max  Mliller  (although  adopting  a  classi- 
fication equally  untenable  when  exclusively  insisted  upon) 
had  objected  to  this  method  of  classification  before  Pro- 
fessor Whitney's  essay  was  published,  on  similar  ground 
to  that  which  is  here  taken,  viz.,  that  though  neither  Brah- 
man, Greek,  nor  Roman  could  point  to  the  founder  of  his 
religion,  yet  "the  student  of  antiquity  can  still  discover  the 
influence  of  individual  minds  or  schools  or  climates.  If  on 
the  other  hand  we  ask  the  founders  of  so-called  individual 
religions,  whether  their  doctrine  is  a  new  one,  whether 
they  preach  a  new  God,  we  almost  always  receive  a  nega- 
tive answer.  Confucius  emphatically  asserts  that  he  was 
a  transmitter,  not  a  maker ;  Buddha  delights  in  represent- 
ing himself  as  a  mere  link  in  a  long  chain  of  enlightened 
teachers;  Christ  declares  that  he  came  to  fulfil,  not  to  de- 
stroy the  Law  or  the  Prophets ;  and  even  Muhammed  in- 
sisted on  tracing  his  faith  back  to  Abrahym,  i.  e.,  Abraham, 
the  friend  of  God,  whom  he  called  a  Moslim,  and  not  a 
Jew  or  Chrstian,  (Koran  iii,  60)  and  who,  he  maintained, 
had  founded  the  temple  at  Mekka.  To  determine  how 
much  is  peculiar  to  the  supposed  founder  of  a  religion,  how 
much  he  received  from  his  predecessors,  and  how  much  was 
added  by  his  disciples,  is  almost  impossible ;  nay,  it  is  per- 
fectly true  that  no  religion  has  ever  struck  root  and  lived, 
unless  it  found  a  congenial  soil  from  which  to  draw  its 
strength  and  support."     (See  Science  of  Religion,  140.) 

Professor  Tiele,  objecting  to  this  same  method,  asks, 
'What  is  the  wisdom  of  a  community  but  the  wisdom  of  its 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  1/ 

more  enlightened  members,  that  is,  of  individuals  ?"  Every 
myth,  rite,  or  eternal  truth,  in  any  religion  was  the  work 
of  an  individual  mind,  and  I  must  re-affirm  that  it  is  only 
from  the  fact  of  their  lying  so  much  in  the  dark,  that  we 
speak  of  unconscious  growths  and  spontaneous  generation. 

Moreover,  these  founders  could  have  no  success  if  they 
were  so  supremely  and  vastly  ahead  of  their  people  as  is 
hinted.  What  they  spoke  was  only  waiting  in  others' 
hearts  for  a  mouth-piece.  It  is  just  because  their  better 
insight  gathers  up  into  itself  merely  in  clearer  manner 
what  many  less  clearly  feel,  because  they  are  able  to  lend 
shape  to  the  more  advanced  ideas  which  the  community 
has  already  come  up  to  and  which  are  already  agreeable 
to  the  minds  of  many  as  soon  as  expressed.  Individuals  are 
ever  at  work,  and  the  community  is  ever  making  some  sort 
of  growth.  The  one  is  conscious,  the  other  not ;  but  neither 
goes  on  without  being  in  a  true  sense  the  product  of  the 
other.  Sometimes  in  the  course  of  events  the  individual's 
opportunities  are  greater  and  his  efforts  shine  forth  in 
more  glaring  light,  but  the  underlying  relationship  and 
bond  of  mutual  dependence  is  never  broken. 

It  must  further  be  observed  that  in  most  cases  these 
founders  never  shaped  new  bodies  of  doctrines,  etc.,  but 
by  inspiration  of  their  life  infused  new  and  pregnant  prin- 
ciples into  others  who  later  developed  them  into  doctrines 
and  founded  upon  them  ceremonies,  which  in  time  became 
a  great  body  of  faith  and  practice,  or  another  religion. 

3.  Professor  Tiele,  starting  from  this  same  external 
historic  characteristic,  has  developed  a  classification  far 
more  tenable  than  either  that  of  Professor  Whitney  or  of 
Dr.  Fairbairn.  (See  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Religion 
to  the  Spread  of  the  Universal  Religions.  Tr.  by  J.  E. 
Carpenter,  L.  1877.  [New  ed.  in  Dutch  and  German.] 
Also  especially,  his  later  statement  in  Encyc,  Brit,,  9th  ed. 
art.  "Religion.")     This  comes  from  the  fact  that  he  has 


l8  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

penetrated  beneath  this  external  shell  to  the  deeper  mean- 
ing. He  has,  in  the  process,  gone  away  from  the  mere 
historic  phenomena  to  a  philosophical  distinction  which  is 
to  be  made  between  them.  Nevertheless  his  treatment 
must  be  placed  with  historical  classifications,  because  he 
looks  at  this  difference  as  one  that  has  come  about  in  the 
process  of  development ;  in  other  words,  the  difference  be- 
tween his  two  great  classes,  though  one  intrinsic  in  kind, 
is  at  bottom  evolutionally  considered  a  difference  of  de- 
grees or  stages.  The  higher  was  once  on  the  same  stage 
in  which  we  find  the  lower;  the  lower  in  course  of  time 
would  naturally  reach  the  higher.  He  claims  that  the 
essence  of  such  divisions  as  that  made  by  Prof.  Whitney 
is  true.  "The  principle  of  the  one  category  is  nature,  that 
of  the  other  ethics  J'  Hence  he  makes  these  the  basis  of  his 
"morphological"  classification  of  religions.  (See  Encyc. 
Brit.  9th  ed.  "Religion.''  See  also  accompanying  chart.) 
With  great  differences  in  their  degrees  of  elevation, 
the  nature  religions  agree  fundamentally  in  the  fact  that 
the  supreme  gods  are  "the  mighty  powers  of  nature,  be 
they  demons,  spirits,  or  men-like  beings,  and  ever  so  highly 
exalted."  They  are  subject  to  change  and  progress  through 
the  unconscious  drift  of  public  opinion,  and  by  the  con- 
scious alterations  and  additions  of  foreign  modes  of  wor- 
ship. "Gods  are  more  and  more  anthropomorphized ;  rites, 
humanized."  Then  too  they  are  susceptible  of  a  moral 
progress,  which  begins  by  ascribing  ethical  attributes  to 
the  highest  gods.  Farther  on  in  the  more  advanced  stages 
of  nature  worship,  ethical  abstractions  are  personified,  dei- 
fied, and  worshiped,  at  first  indiscriminately  and  indistin- 
guishably  intermixed  with  the  nature  gods.  By  and  by  the 
stronger  and  clearer  minds  (the  philosophers,  sages, 
prophets)  begin  to  perceive  the  difference.  To  them  the 
latest  elements  or  deities  are  of  overshadowing — indeed 
of  sole — importance.     They  preach  the  predominance  of 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 


19 


the  moral.    Persecution  ensues.    The  defenders  of  the  old 
faith  abhor  these  independent  spirits  whose  mission  is  to 

PoLYDAEMONisTic  Magical.  (Under  Animistic  control.)    (Including 
the  degraded  religions  of  so-called  savage  and  uncivilized  peoples.) 

Japanese  Kamino-m|i4M. 
Dravidians  ^^ 

Finns  and  Ehsts 


<  o 

o  w 
o  « 


en 

U 


Therianthropic  Poly- 
theism 

(Purified  or  Organized 
Magical) 


Anthropomorphic 
Polytheism 

(Worship  of  man-like, 
but  super-human  and 
semi-ethical  beings.) 


r  National  Nomistic 
(Nomothetic). 


Universalistic 


Unorganized 


Old  Arabic 
"    Pelasgic 
"    Italiote 
'  •    Etruscan 
• '    Slavonic 


^  Organized. . . 


Semi-civil- 
ized peoples 
of  America. 


Maya 
Natchez 
Toltec- 
Aztec 
Muysca 
Inca 
Ancient  Chinese 
' '       Babylonian 
(Chaldean) 
"       Egyptian 


Vedic 

Pre-Zarathustrian 
Younger  Babylonian 
and  Assyrian 

Semites  of 

Celtic 
Germanic 
Hellenic 
Graeco-Roman 


Phoenicia 
Canaan 
Aramaea 
South  Arabic 
Sabaean. 


'{ 


Ancient 
Modern 


Taoism 

Confucianism 

Brahmanism 

Jainism 

Primitive  Buddhism 

Mazdaism  (Zarathustrianism) 

Mosaism 

Judaism 

Islam 

Buddhism 

Christianity. 


them'mere  destruction.    They  speak  in  derision  of  the  pure 
abstractions  by  which  these  innovators  would  dethrone 


20  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

the  old  and  trusted  gods  of  the  fathers,  and  if  the  ancient 
faith  has  not  lost  too  greatly  its  hold  on  the  masses  (as  it 
generally  has  not  at  these  early  stages) ,  these  high  thinkers 
— Socrates,  Jesus,  etc. — may  pay  the  penalty  of  their  ele- 
vation by  premature  and  violent  deaths.  These  simpler 
and  more  sensuous  faiths  with  true  instincts  perceive  the 
danger  to  the  old  traditions  if  such  doubt  and  preaching 
are  allowed  to  go  on  unmolested.  A  little  infiltration  may 
be  tolerated,  may  indeed  give  an  agreeabfe  vivacity  to 
religious  life;  "but  the  reform  must  not  exceed  certain 
limits,"  for  if  it  does,  the  old  forms  would  plainly  become 
superfluous.  Finally  when  the  new  ideas  have  become 
wide-spread  enough,  the  old  ones  meet  the  doom  which 
from  the  first  awaited  them.  No  help  can  do  more  than 
make  the  process  gradual;  no  arguments,  however  spe- 
cious, no  claims  of  sacredness,  no  assertions  about  superior- 
ity or  universality  can  make,  head  against  the  on-coming 
intellectual  tendency.  "No  political  power,  no  mighty  priest- 
hood, no  poetry,  no  mysticism  like  that  of  the  Neo-Platon- 
ists,  no  romanticism  like  that  of  Julian,  not  eVen  an  at- 
tempt to  imitate  the  organization  and  the  rites  of  an  ethical 
religion,  can  save  it  any  longer  from  utter  decay." 

The  tide  of  religious  conception  is  now  turned.  The 
old  nature  religion  may  now  be  considered  as  advanced  to 
the  stage  of  an  ethical  religion,  in  that  the  predominant 
characteristic  has  changed.  The  traditional  naturistic  ele- 
ments are  not  wholly  set  aside  or  excluded,  but  they  are 
subordinated  and  assume  somewhat  of  ethical  functions. 
The  more  important  of  the  old  nature  gods  survive,  but 
no  longer  occupy  first  places  and  dominate.  On  the  con- 
trary they  take  menial  positions,  become  serving  spirits, 
ministers,  angels  (dyyeXoi,  yazatas,  etc.)  before  the  su- 
preme moral  Orderer  of  the  universe.  A  great  breadth 
of  conception  has  entered  in.  Man  views  the  world  not 
so  much  in  its  former  conflicting  diversities.    The  natur- 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  21 

istic  religious  standpoint  has  been  reversed.  The  poly- 
daemonistic  and  polytheistic  character  is  tending  to  mono- 
theism. The  polytheism  is  at  least  becoming  organized 
and  monarchical.  To  this  is  added  greater  individualism 
among  the  adherents.  Conscious  speculation,  imagination 
and  reflection  increase.  Growth  goes  on  more  by  these 
than  by  unconscious  national  accumulation  or  change.  Some 
higher  central  notion  of  a  more  definite  sort  of  salvation 
to  be  attained  comes  into  prominence.  Organization  for 
the  purpose  of  fostering  and  propagating  this  idea  takes 
place.  Men  bind  themselves  more  closely  together  to  aid 
in  practicing  it,  and  the  religion  is  finally  "instituted  or 
organized"  by  later  hands ;  v^hile  we  may  merely  say  it  was 
"founded"  by  or  received  its  original  impulse  from  an  in- 
dividual or  body  of  priests  or  teachers.  These  later  or- 
ganizers always  ascribe  to  the  "founders"  a  high  standing 
in  relationship  with  the  Divine.  They  stand  as  inspired 
prophets  to  whom  the  Deity  has  revealed  his  will,  as  mes- 
sengers expressly  sent  to  direct  men,  as  sons  of  the  gods 
instructed  with  various  missions,  or  indeed,  as  incarnations 
of  God  himself.  So  much  on  the  general  divisions  of  the 
topic. 

Subdivision  of  Nature  Religions.  (See  chart).  Pro- 
fessor Tiele  calls  the  very  earliest  stage  of  religion  the 
Polyzoic.  This  he  does  not  place  in  the  outline,  since  we 
have  UT?  information  concerning  it.  He  thinks  "man,  in 
that  primitive  stage,  must  have  regarded  the  natural  phe- 
nomena, on  which  his  life  and  welfare  depend,  as  living 
beings  endowed  with  superhuman  magical  power;  and  his 
imagination,  as  yet  uncontrolled  by  observation  and  rea- 
soning, must  frequently  have  given  them  the  shape  of 
frightful  animals,  monstrous  portentous  mythical  beings, 
some  of  which  still  survive  in  the  later  mythologies." 

The  earliest  stage  with  which  we  have  an  acquaintance, 
he  names  the  Polydaemonistic  Magical.    Animism  is  the 


22  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

predominating  characteristic,  though  the  reHgion  is  not 
mere  animism.  Animism  is  a  sort  of  primitive  philos- 
ophy. The  primitive  mind  has  come  to  beheve  in  a  spirit 
which  is  superior  to  the  body.  This  he  extends  to  the 
phenomena  of  nature  by  supposing  them  to  be  the  work 
of  spirits  of  departed  men.  This  is  extended  till  everything 
living,  moving,  startling,  extraordinary,  is  finally  attrib- 
uted as  the  work  of  mighty  spirits  moving  freely  here  and 
there  and  abiding  either  permanently  or  temporarily  in 
this  or  that  object  or  region.  The  most  powerful  among 
them  come  to  attain  in  man's  mind  the  rank  of  divine  be- 
ings, and  are  worshiped  either  as  invisible  or  embodied 
spirits  (spiritism  or  fetichism).  Three  special  character- 
istics of  this  stage  are  noticeable:  (i)  Its  confused  and 
indeterminate  mythology,  though  some  spirits  are  more 
powerful  than  others,  especially  the  heavenly,  and  in  gen- 
eral there  is  a  supreme  spirit  of  heaven  who  is  mightiest 
of  all;  (2)  The  implicit  confidence  in  magic  through  which 
sorcerers  and  fetich-priests  come  to  be  held  in  such  venera- 
tion; and  (3)  The  predominance  of  fear  over  all  other  feel- 
ings and  the  doing  of  religious  acts  generally  for  selfish 
ends. 

Therianthropic  Polytheism  is  the  name  given  to  the 
next  higher  stage.  The  name  is  intended  to  describe  the 
character  in  which  the  gods  usually  appear,  viz.,  in  the 
forms  of  animals  and  men,  yet  predominantly  the  former. 
They  are  really  spiritual  conceptions  embodying  themselves 
in  these  ways.  Animal  worship  is  everywhere  in  such 
religions  a  prominent  characteristic.  The  gods  are  repre- 
sented as  men  with  animal  heads,  or  as  animals  with  human 
heads.  Such  religions  have  yet  an  element  of  magic,  but 
it  is  in  the  hands  of  an  organized  priesthood,  hence  they 
are  characterized  as  purified  or  organized  magical  relig- 
ions. These  practices  are  forbidden  to  private  sorcerers, 
and  in  the  hands  of  the  priesthood  have  a  developed  ritual. 


THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS.  2^ 

Some  are  very  highly  organized,  others  little.  Some  ap- 
proximate very  closely  to  the  next  higher  stage  of  pure  an- 
thropomorphism, others  closely  to  the  next  lower,  of  ani- 
mistic predominance.  In  the  former  there  is  a  strong 
tendency  to  monotheism,  accompanied  by  a  sort  of  theo- 
cratic government  in  which  the  king  is  the  living  repre- 
sentative of  the  king  of  the  gods. 

Next  in  order  are  the  Aiithropomorphic  Polytheisms, 
the  highest  stage  in  the  naturistic  religions.  These,  as 
well  as  all  the  higher  forms,  contain  many  survivals  of  the 
characteristics  of  the  earlier  stages,  yet  those  features  have 
been  adapted  to  newer  ones  and  no  longer  predominate, 
and  consequently  the  religion  deserves  another  name.  The 
gods  are  now  all  superhuman  and  manlike,  rulers  of  nature, 
effecting  good  and  evil.  They  are  more  ethical  than  the 
former,  yet  the  mythology  is  sensual  in  character.  Wars, 
wooings,  revelries,  and  the  lowest  passionate  indulgences 
are  exceedingly  frequent.  Such  myths,  of  course,  were 
shocking  to  graver  thinkers,  but  they  formed  the  staple 
for  the  masses  till  the  time  of  naturistic  religious  decay. 
"Not  one  of  the  religions  in  the  polytheistic  stage  was  able 
to  elevate  itself  to  the  purely  ethical  standpoint;  but,  as 
moral  consciousness  went  on  increasing,  deeper  and  more 
ethical  religious  ideas  gathered  round  the  persons  of  the 
most  humane  gods,  the  beloved  son  or  daughter  of  the 
supreme  deity,  and  gave  rise  to  purer  modes  of  worship 
which  seemed  to  be  forebodings  of  a  time  to  come." 

Subdivision  of  Ethical  Religions. — The  question  of  sub- 
dividing this  class  into  Nomistic  and  Universalistic  relig- 
ions has  called  forth  considerable  discussion.  The  essential 
difference  consists  in  the  features  that  the  former  are  based 
on  sacred  law  drawn  from  sacred  books,  while  the  latter 
start  from  principles  and  maxims.  (On  the  soundness  of 
this  asserted  difference  more  will  be  said  later.)  Professor 
Kuenen  used  the  expression  ''National  Religions  and  Uni- 


24  THE   CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS. 

versal  Religions''  as  the  title  of  his  Hibbert  Lectures, 
(1882).  He  excluded  Islam  from  the  latter.  Several 
other  terms  have  been  proposed  for  this  class.  Among 
the  rest  "world  religions"  and  "world  churches."  The  lat- 
ter title  was  given  by  Professor  Rauwenhoff  (Theol.  Tijd- 
schrift,  1885,  No.  i),  who,  however,  rejects  this  method  of 
classification.  Professor  Tiele  himself  would  not  use  the 
term  "world  religions,"  unless  as  a  sort  of  practical  desig- 
nation "to  distinguish  the  three  religions  which  have  found 
their  way  to  different  races  and  peoples  and  all  of  which 
profess  the  intention  to  conquer  the  world,  from  such  com- 
munities as  are  generally  limited  to  a  single  race  or  nation, 
and,  where  they  have  extended  farther,  have  done  so  only 
in  the  train  of,  and  in  connection  with,  a  superior  civili- 
zation." He  granted  that  strictly  speaking  there  can  be 
only  one  world  or  universal  religion.  No  religion  has  any 
claim  to  such  a  title  from  its  achievements,  whatever  it  may 
have  in  it  potentially.  Hence  he  adopted  the  more  modest 
title  "universalistic,"  in  place  of  "universal"  or  "world," 
religions.  Buddhism  and  Christianity  are  distinguished 
from  Confucianism,  Brahmanism,  Jainism,  Mazdaism,  and 
Judaism,  by  their  missionary  spirit.  The  latter,  after  each 
becoming  the  religion  of  a  single  race,  have  ceased  to 
spread,  and  after  centuries  of  stiffening  into  dogmatism 
and  formalism  are  slowly  fading  away;  while  the  former 
number  their  adherents  by  hundreds  of  millions,  are  spread- 
ing among  different  races,  and  are  rapidly  making  inroads 
upon  the  territory  of  other  faiths. 

This,  said  Professor  Tiele,  "cannot  be  due  to  some  for- 
tuitous or  external  circumstances  only,  but  must  have  its 
principal  cause  in  the  very  nature  of  each  sort  of  religion." 
By  other  terms  he  described  the  one  class  as  "nationalistic" 
or  "particularistic"  in  contrast  with  the  "universalistic." 
The  three  religions  belonging  to  the  latter  class  aspire  to 
represent  religious  ideas  which  were  not  limited  to  the 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  2$ 

nation's  horizon,  but  which  would  have  an  interest  for 
humanity,  which  would  bespeak  the  general  aspirations  of 
the  human  heart.  For  this  reason,  two  of  these  religions 
were  rejected  by  the  peoples  to  which  their  founders  be- 
longed by  birth,  and  the  third  one,  Mohammedanism, 
though  founded  by  an  Arab,  derived  its  fundamental  ideas 
from  Jews  and  Christians  and  was  raised  to  its  high  posi- 
tion by  Persians  and  other  peoples.  Its  unnational  char- 
acter is  shown  in  the  fact  that  its  converts,  whether  made 
by  force  of  arms  or  by  missionary  exertions,  enjoy  on  em- 
bracing Islam  the  same  rights  and  dignities  as  Arabs.  So 
too  Buddhism  "looks  for  the  man,  the  miseries  of  existence 
beset  all  alike,  its  law  is  a  law  of  grace  for  all."  That  so 
broad  is  the  Christian  aim  at  its  best,  need  not  be  here  sup- 
ported. 

Though  not  on  the  same  level,  these  religions  are 
classed  together  because  of  their  resemblance  in  ori- 
gin and  aim.  Islam  and  Buddhism  are  only  relatively 
universalistic,  each  showing  the  onesided  religious  devel- 
opment of  its  race  at  its  highest.  Islam  emphasizes  the 
absoluteness  of  the  divine  side  at  the  expense  of  the  human. 
Man  is  of  no  importance,  hence  he  has  but  one  duty,  obe- 
dience. In  such  a  system  ethics  cannot  develop.  Society 
must  be  conducted  on  a  despotic  basis.  Buddhism  puts  the 
stress  wholly  on  the  human  side.  It  knows  no  divine. 
Man  must  save  himself  by  his  own  exertions.  Self-renun- 
ciation, full  and  entire,  is  the  way  of  escape  from  the  mis- 
eries of  life.  The  more  truly  religious  has  no  place;  or 
if  it  develops  at  all,  it  results  in  a  childish  fantastic  myth- 
ology. 

On  Professor  Pfleiderer's  basis,  that  religion  is  the 
synthesis  of  dependence  and  liberty,  Islam  represents  the 
former,  Buddhism  the  latter.  (Cf.  this  with  Pfleiderer's 
classification  farther  on.)     Christianity  in  its  purest  forms 


26  THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS. 

fuses  the  two,  dependence  and  liberty,  the  divine  and  the 
human,  reHgion  and  ethics,  into  a  real  unity. 

We  have  in  this  classification,  on  the  v^hole,  the  most 
profound  and  profitable  grouping  thus  far  considered.  In 
its  development  we  receive  many  valuable  suggestions. 
But  good  as  we  see  it  to  be,  satisfied  or  flattered  as  we  may 
feel  ourselves  over  the  result,  still  we  must  as  far  as  pos- 
sible look  at  all  the  facts  in  these  matters,  and  be  governed 
as  little  as  possible  by  our  prejudices,  desires,  and  the  cir- 
cumstances of  where  and  under  what  influences  we  were 
born.  In  the  spirit  of  such  an  outlook  and  such  an  attempt, 
several  things  must  be  said  about  this  classification. 

In  the  first  place,  to  distinguish  between  nomistic  and 
universalistic  ethical  religions  on  the  ground  given,  is  prac- 
tically to  make  distinctions  on  the  basis  of  features  where 
there  is  no  essential  difference.  Buddhism,  Christianity, 
and  Mohammedanism  are  each  as  truly  sacred  book  reli- 
gions as  Confucianism,  Judaism,  etc.  But  they  are  in  ad- 
dition what  he  describes  them — religions  based  on  prin- 
ciples and  maxims,  on  great  central  dominating  ideas.  This 
more  definite  characteristic,  together  with  the  facts  that 
their  bodies  of  doctrine  cluster  around  distinct  personali- 
ties, and  that  they  have  operated  under  more  favorable 
opportunities  as  to  civilization  and  coincidences  in  time, 
have  largely  occasioned  their  superior  successes.  He  ad- 
mits that  other  religions  have  extended  farther  than  their 
race  limits  ''in  the  train  of  or  in  connection  with  superior 
civilization." 

He  distinguishes  Buddhism  and  Christianity  from  the 
others  by  the  fact  that  they  are  trying  to  make  proselytes, 
while  the  others  are  doing  so  no  more.  But  Islam  cannot 
be  excluded  from  this  desire  and  activity.  Again,  the  con- 
trast shown  between  this  feeling  in  their  adherents  and  its 
absence  in  those  of  others,  is  due  more  to  the  superior 
moral  development  of  those  of  their  peoples  who  are  so 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  2/ 

engaged,  than  to  an  essentially  restrictive  national  char- 
acter of  the  religious  side  of  those  religions  who  are  not 
so  engaged.  I  say  religious  side  of  the  religions,  because 
we  must  not  in  our  enthusiasm  over  and  emphasis  of  the 
morality  connected  with  a  religion  forget  that  this  does 
not  constitute  the  whole  religion.  Religion  has  its  moral 
side,  but  morals  are  not  religion.  Religion  should  no  doubt 
be  helpful  in  the  development  of  morals;  but  though  it  be 
of  inestimable  importance,  this  must  not  reach  an  eclipsing 
character.  To  make  religion  morality,  and  then  to  make 
morality  our  kind  of  morality,  would  be  an  easy  way  to 
decide  that  some  peoples  are  devoid  of  both.  But  this  is 
not  science.  When  we  say,  this  or  that  religion  is  not  mak- 
ing proselytes,  we  must  look  for  reasons  before  deciding 
that  this  is  an  intrinsic  defect  in  the  religion  per  se.  It  may 
be,  as  above  indicated,  from  lack  of  moral  development  of 
the  beneficent  unselfish  feeling  of  the  people  quite  apart 
from  any  thing  which  the  religious  outlook  alone  would 
necessitate.  It  may  be  from  other  circumstances  beyond 
the  power  of  the  votaries  to  hinder,  e.  g.,  we  know  that 
many  religions  are  in  a  state  of  decay  brought  about  by 
the  destruction  of  their  political  support  and  by  persecu- 
tions. Sometimes  it  may  be  from  poverty  of  material  re- 
sources to  undertake.  Sometimes,  alas,  by  internal  dog- 
matic development  and  formalistic  decay.  But  from  this 
last  we  must  confess  that  the  great  missionary  religions 
have  not  been  free,  and  have  in  some  countries  hardened 
into  as  dead  and  disinterested  a  formalism  as  others.  Wit- 
ness Spain,  Turkey,  and  Ceylon.  Nor  can  we  be  at  all  cer- 
tain that  their  fate  would  have  been  measurably  different 
among  those  races,  climates  and  environments  where  we 
find  dormant  and  fading  faiths.  It  may  even  be  doubted 
whether  the  great  religions  accompanied  by  their  best  rep- 
resentative peoples  would  have  maintained  a  living  pro- 
gressive faith  under  such  political  and  climatic  circum- 


28  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

stances  during  thousands  of  years.  It  must  be  further 
observed,  that  below  certain  limits  of  intelligence,  men 
will  believe  what  they  are  taught.  Men  of  faith  would  find 
no  difficulty  in  being  men  of  another  faith,  if  the  fates  of 
life  had  put  them  in  such  an  environment.  It  is  only  when 
a  high  degree  of  individuality  of  thought  has  made  them 
think  for  themselves,  that  a  religion  becomes  unbearable. 

Along  this  same  line  of  thought,  his  remark  that  the 
three  universalistic  religions  were  representatives  of  re- 
ligious ideas  which  had  in  view  not  the  special  religious 
wants  of  the  nation,  but  the  more  general  aspirations  of 
humanity,  can  scarcely  be  admitted  as  sound.  Every  de- 
votee of  every  distinct  faith  or  sect  in  the  world  believes 
that  his  religion  represents  just  such  ideas  as  would  be 
of  general  interest  to  the  race,  if  only  he  could  get  the 
race  to  see  its  interest  and  its  duty  of  accepting  his  belief. 
He  pities,  deplores,  complains,  exhorts,  or  despairs  and 
damns,  according  to  the  doctrines  of  his  order,  those  who 
do  not. 

It  is  going  too  far  to  say  that  Buddhism  and  Christian- 
ity were  rejected  by  the  peoples  to  whom  their  founders  be- 
longed because  they  represented  universalistic  rather  than 
national  ideas.  As  stated  above,  the  parent  religions  were 
full  of  the  faith  that  their  teachings  were  just  such  as  the 
world  as  a  whole  needed,  indeed  must  have,  if  it  ever 
received  salvation.  Rather  was  it  because  the  new  faiths 
rejected  and  despised  the  old  means,  that  they  themselves 
were  spurned  and  persecuted  by  the  parent  religions.  It  is 
true,  they  were  a  great  advance  in  sympathy  toward  the 
world,  and  hence  also  a  liberalized  outlook.  The  new  way 
of  looking  at  religion  filled  the  early  adherents  with  new 
enthusiasm,  new  hope,  and  new  confidence  that  the  world 
could  be  brought  to  see  and  believe  in  this  way  (as  new 
ways  of  looking  at  any  cause,  in  or  out  of  religion,  always 
inspires  to  this)  ;  but  that  they  any  more  seriously  than 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  29 

their  predecessors  in  the  old  faith  believed  themselves  to 
possess  religious  ideas  of  world-wide  rather  than  national 
interest,  is  erroneous,  and  results  in  a  denial  to  the  old 
faiths  of  that  which  is  essential  to  any  and  every  faith. 
The  faith  of  any  individual  or  any  people  must  necessarily 
in  his  or  their  mind  be  the  faith  for  the  world.  If  he  or 
they  do  not  preach  it,  it  is  either  because  external  cir- 
cumstances do  not  permit,  because  it  lacks  definiteness 
and  clearness  in  the  believer's  own  mind,  or  because  they 
are  so  engrossed  in  its  formalities  as  to  be  oblivious  to 
what  if  conscious  they  would  regard  as  others  needs.  If 
those  founders  of  new  religions  had  sought  to  generate  a 
world-wide  enthusiasm  over  the  old  lines  and  methods, 
history  teaches  us  that  they  would  never  have  been  cast  off. 
They  cast  themselves  off  before  others  cast  them  off.  The 
founders  and  establishers  opened  the  conflict  by  an  absolute 
renunciation  of  the  forms  of  the  current  religion.  It  might 
have  been  difficult,  perhaps  practically  impossible,  to  have 
brought  forward  the  new  ideas  with  the  continuance  of  all 
the  old  forms  and  methods.  It  is  a  historic  fact  that  the 
idea  which  each  of  these  three  great  faiths  embodied  was 
taken  up  by  parties  within  the  old  religions,  but  only  to  a 
very  limited  extent  were  they  successful.  Why  they  were 
not  more  so,  would  be  very  difficult  to  ascertain.  In  Jain- 
ism  we  have  the  "national"  form  of  the  Buddhistic  idea; 
in  Ebionitism  that  of  Christianity ;  and  possibly  in  the  Wah- 
habites  that  of  Islam.  Perhaps  at  certain  junctures  of 
conditions  a  complete  break  with  the  old  is  the  very  best 
that  can  be  done,  although  in  general  growth  up,  out  of, 
and  above  is  healthier,  more  enduring,  and  apt  to  be  more 
wide-spread  than  reform  by  reaction  and  opposition.  How- 
ever, this  is  not  here  our  present  concern,  but  merely  to 
see,  in  the  truest  light  we  can,  why  these  faiths  were  not 
more  lastingly  successful  among  their  own  peoples.  There 
might  be  many  other  reasons  given.    I  will  mention  only 


30  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

one,  regarding  the  attitude  of  Judaism  to  Christianity,  viz., 
that  the  position  or  too  close  relationship  to  God  which 
both  Jesus  himself  claimed  and  his  followers  who  wrought 
out  the  doctrines  more  fully  demanded  for  his  personality, 
was  revolting  to  the  highly  developed  Jewish  monotheistic 
sense  of  that  time.  The  development  of  the  conception  as 
to  the  person  of  Christ  had  come  about  with  the  aid  of  ideas 
then  prevalent  which  had  their  origin  in  Greek  semi-mytho- 
logical philosophy.  The  Jewish  Semites  had  had  for  cen- 
turies no  taste  for  mythology.  The  Prophets  had  drilled 
them  into  loyalty  to  Jehovah  alone.  He  had  no  progeny 
nor  co-rulers.  Pauline  theology  set  Christ  up  as  his  deity 
son,  made  him  in  many  respects  equal  with  God,  and  as- 
signed to  him  a  conspicuous  part  in  the  moral  government 
and  management  of  the  world.  Indeed,  the  primitive  Chris- 
tian idea  added  a  new  feature  to  the  character  of  the  Deity, 
but  instead  of  putting  it  into  the  character  of  Jehovah,  it 
embodied  it  in  a  new  god  or  personage  which  it  set  up 
beside  him.  In  this  difference  and  claim  alone  we  have 
nearly  a  sufficient  explanation  of  the  Jewish  rejection  of 
the  new  faith.  To  our  day,  this  has  remained  the  great 
and  all  hindering  objection  to  Christianity  by  the  Children 
of  Israel.  From  their  standpoint,  it  had  its  basis  in  myth- 
ology and  idolatry ;  and  since  the  days  when  the  Decalogue 
was  written,  nothing  has  been  more  repugnant  to  a  faithful 
son  of  Abraham  than  these. 

Ethically  the  new  faiths  have,  speaking  in  a  general 
way,  an  intrinsic  advantage,  and  this  advantage  was  a 
natural  outgrowth  of  the  circumstance  of  an  improving 
social  development  in  the  time  of  their  origins.  (  See  Prof. 
J.  R.  Seeley's  Ecce  Homo  for  an  excellent  exposition  of  the 
social  and  moral  causes  at  work  in  the  Roman  Empire  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era.)  Moreover,  this  eth- 
ical advantage  of  these  faiths  would  have  availed  nothing, 
had  it  not  been  for  the  indispensable  aid  afforded  to  their 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  3I 

success  by  the  improving  social  and  ethical  relations.  But 
we  must  again  remind  ourselves,  that  however  important 
ethics  may  be  for  the  practical  every-day  purposes  of  life, 
ethics  is  not  all  of  religion.  A  classification  might  be  made 
on  the  basis  of  the  metaphysical  characteristics  of  the  ob- 
jects of  faith,  in  which  case  it  would  be  impossible  by  the 
best  results  of  our  highest  philosophy  and  science  to  sustain 
the  assertion  that  these  three  great  religions  are  more 
"universalistic"  or  more  true  to  the  facts  than  Brahman- 
ism,  Confucianism,  or  Mazdaism.  Philosophy  and  Science 
have  scarcely  settled  the  question  as  to  whether  the  truth 
lies  with  monistic  idealism,  monistic  realism,  or  dualism. 
Nor  have  they  been  able  to  decide  positively  which  is  the 
more  inspiring  as  a  philosophy  of  life.  Until  something  more 
definite  is  agreed  upon  regarding  this  more  religious  side 
of  religion,  it  will  not  do  for  us  to  be  too  dogmatic  in  our 
assertions  of  superiority  here  or  there  merely  on  ethical 
grounds.  Down  to  the  present,  ethics  have  been  the  fea- 
ture of  apparently  greatest  importance,  yet  we  are  not  in 
the  least  sure  but  that  when  society  shall  have  reached  a 
relatively  high  moral  development  in  which  the  crying  de- 
mands of  "live  and  let  live''  are  heeded  without  great  exer- 
tion, the  ethical  feature  of  religion  will  sink  to  be  a  matter 
of  minor  significance. 

And  now  a  final  remark  as  to  the  confusion  regarding 
the  meaning  of  such  terms  as  Christianity,  Buddhism,  etc. 
If,  e.  g.,  we  mean  by  Christianity  the  teachings  of  its 
founder  and  establishers,  we  are  constantly  in  danger  of 
confounding  ( if  we  do  not  actually  do  so)  the  objective  meta- 
physical and  physical  sides  of  that  early  (and  to  us  the 
genuine)  Christianity  with  nineteenth  century  ideas  of 
theism  and  the  universe.  On  a  second  thought,  after  turn- 
ing to  history,  we  perceive  that  increasing  knowledge  of 
facts  and  laws  is  gradually  supplanting  the  early  Christian 
ideas  of  the  universe  and  with  this  changing  the  conception 


32  THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS. 

of  God.  Again,  if  we  mean  by  Christianity  the  standards 
of  thought  and  duty  of  to-day  prevalent  among  enhghtened 
nations,  the  body  of  belief  regarding  the  universe  and 
man's  relation  to  it  and  to  his  fellows,  we  perceive  that  we 
have  undermined  the  ground  of  our  frequent  appeal  to  the 
original  type  as  authority.  For  except  in  the  spirit  of  sym- 
pathy, love  or  universal  brotherhood,  which  is  the  common 
ideal  of  the  two,  they  are  as  different  as  1800  years  of  vary- 
ing fortune  could  make  them.  Hence  our  appeal  must  take 
the  character  of  a  resource  for  inspiration  and  a  refresh- 
ment of  courage.  Whichever  or  whatever  our  position, 
we  should  endeavor  to  avoid  such  an  incoherent  mixing 
of  facts  and  principles  and  periods  as  that  so  often  met  with. 

IV.  Geographical  and  Statistical  Method. 

The  last  was  the  method  of  time.  This  is  that  of  space. 
In  this,  religions  are  measured  and  compared  according 
to  extent  or  quantity.  At  first  thought,  this  is  an  ab- 
ing  to  extent  or  quantity.  At  first  thought,  this  is  an  ab- 
surdity; yet  like  all  the  others  it  may  teach  its  lesson. 
Coupled  with  careful  ethnological  study,  it  is  likely  to  be- 
come of  great  importance.  Its  virtues  do  not  lie  in  the  way 
of  teaching  the  quality  or  superiority  of  religions,  as  the 
argument  of  number  is  so  often  used.  Numbers  are  never 
a  mark  of  right  and  goodness,  nor  can  they  tell  us  the 
right  way  in  the  higher  things  of  morals  and  religion. 
Notwithstanding  this,  they  are  always  interesting,  and  they 
may  be  of  inestimable  use  in  showing  how  tendencies  have 
carried  themselves  out,  how  principles  have  affected  men, 
by  what  sort  of  principles  they  have  been  moved,  and  to 
what  extent;  and  these  teachings  coupled  with  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  circumstances  in  which  the  given  peoples  were 
placed  and  of  the  stage  of  their  mental  development  when 
the  principles  became  operative,  may  teach  much  concern- 
ing the  methods  and  laws  of  human  progress.    Moreover, 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  33 

maps  and  figures  may  show  us  the  strength  of  principles, 
doctrines,  and  tendencies  whose  nature  we  already  know; 
and  if  we  can  procure  good  charts  and  fairly  well  authen- 
ticated enumerations  of  our  own  and  former  ages,  we  may 
obtain  a  vastly  clearer  and  better  impression  of  the  march 
of  these  principles  and  doctrines  through  the  world  both 
in  reference  to  space  and  time.  To  see  plainly  the  con- 
dition of  things  at  various  periods  in  time,  is  to  grasp  the 
process  of  the  evolution  and  transformation  of  human 
ideas.  Finally,  I  must  say  that  such  an  attempt  is  in  accord 
with  the  spirit  and  aim  of  the  most  advanced  methods  of 
teaching  in  history  and  physical  science.  It  falls  into  line 
with  those  ideals  which  in  these  modern  times  have  filled 
huge  buildings  with  specimens  of  every  sort  ranging 
through  the  three  kingdoms  of  nature — animal,  vegetable, 
and  mineral;  which  equip  great  institutions  with  every 
conceivable  sort  of  mechanical  device  for  illustrating  the 
laws  of  the  physical  world;  which  spare  no  expense  to 
establish  bureaus  of  statistics  and  to  report  everything  sup- 
posed in  any  way  to  have  a  bearing  in  illustrating  the  con- 
ditions and  tendencies  of  nations;  and  which  establish 
signal  service  stations  and  geographical  institutes  in  which 
the  changes  in  the  kingdoms  of  the  heavens  above  and  the 
earth  beneath  may  be  accurately  observed  and  duly  repre- 
sented by  chart  and  statistics. 

I.  Geographical  Distribution. — To  completely  pre- 
sent to  the  eye  the  religious  condition  of  the  world  through 
geographical  relations  one  would  need  a  series  of  "dis- 
solving maps"  representing  the  changes,  transformations, 
and  extensions  of  religions  from  the  earliest  dawn  of  the 
sentiment  in  human  minds  down  to  the  present  day.  From 
lack  of  such  a  desideratum  we  shall  have  to  extemporize 
what  illustration  is  possible  by  means  of  maps  of  this  and 
other  periods.  The  means  are  exceedingly  scarce  and  the 
periods  chosen  for  illustration  must  consequently  be  few. 

>^  of   THE 

UNIVERSITY 


34  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

(i)  About  1880,  For  the  geographical  extension  of 
the  various  principal  religions  at  the  present  time  I  will 
refer  to  maps  and  tables  in  Meyer's  Hand-Lexikon,  II,  p. 
161 1 ;  Berghaus's  Phys,  Atlas,  Abt.  VII,  iii.  No.  63;  and 
Droysen,  Historischer  Hand- At  las  (last  map).  Accord- 
ing to  these  best  and  latest  reliable  authorities  which  I 
am  able  to  find,  the  extent  of  the  various  faiths  may,  with 
some  limitations  and  modifications,  be  stated  as  follows: 

Shamanism,  the  highest  development  of  the  so-called 
savage  religions,  has  chief  possession  of  the  mind  in  Africa 
between  10  degrees  north  and  20  degrees  south  of  the 
Equator,  in  Northern  Asia,  Northern  North  America,  and 
Central  South  America. 

Brahmanism  (or  better  Hinduism)  is  now  limited  to 
the  Aryans  in  Eastern  and  Southern  Hindustan. 

Buddhism,  in  variously  modified  forms,  extends  from 
the  middle  of  the  Malacca  Peninsula  northward  including 
Siam,  Anam,  Birmah,  Nepal,  Thibet,  Kashmire,  China, 
Mongolia,  Corea,  into  many  islands  of  the  Pacific,  espe- 
cially Japan,  Formosa,  and  the  Philippine  group,  parts  of 
other  East  India  islands,  the  whole  of  Ceylon,  a  numerous 
following  in  Bactria,  scattered  representatives  in  Siberia, 
and  some  107,500  votaries  in  South-Eastern  Europe. 

Mohammedanism  is  territorially  very  wide  spread  and 
shows  evidence  of  great  vitality  and  activity  at  the  pres- 
ent time.  Its  control  is  well-nigh  complete  from  Arabia 
eastward  over  Persia,  Belloochistan,  Afghanistan,  East 
and  West  Turkestan,  the  Kirgis  Steppe;  and  westward 
over  Syria,  Asia  Minor,  Turkey;  the  whole  of  Northern 
Africa  including  Egypt,  Nubia,  Tripoli,  Fezzan,  Tunis, 
Algeria,  Morocco,  the  Sahara  and  Sudan  regions ;  the  East 
Coast  including  Somali,  Galla,  and  Zanzibar;  in  the  East 
Indies,  Sumatra,  Java,  Borneo,  Celebes,  and  the  south  half 
of  Malacca ;  and  a  considerable  representation  in  Hindus- 
tan and  Birmah. 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  35 

Christianity  has  three  great  divisions:  Greek  (or  Ori- 
ental), Roman  CathoHc,  and  Protestant. 

Greek  Christianity  prevails  almost  entirely  in  Russia, 
Roumania,  Montenegro,  Servia,  and  Greece;  to  a  consid- 
erable extent  also  in  Turkey,  Hungary,  Caucasia,  Armenia, 
Siberia,  and  Abyssinia. 

Roman  Catholicism  has  yet  by  far  the  widest  sway. 
It  is  the  all  prevalent  form  in  Austria,  Italy,  Spain,  Portu- 
gal, France,  Bavaria,  Baden,  Alsace-Lorraine,  Belgium; 
numbers  about  two-fifths  in  Holland  and  the  German  Em- 
pire ;  about  one-half  in  Switzerland ;  prevails  again  in  Mex- 
ico, Central  America,  Columbia,  Equador,  Venezuela, 
Guiana,  Peru,  Bolivia,  Chili,  Argentina,  Uruguay,  Para- 
guay, Brazil,  Hayti,  the  Spanish  and  French  West  Indies, 
the  African  islands  in  the  Atlantic  and  Indian  Oceans; 
numbers  from  150  to  400  in  every  thousand  inhabitants 
of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  British  America,  United 
States,  Australia,  New  Zealand,  and  Polynesia;  and  has 
scattering  missions  elsewhere. 

Protestantism,  in  some  of  its  many  varieties,  is  the  chief 
faith  in  Great  Britain,  Denmark,  Norway,  Sweden,  Fin- 
land; enumerates  three-fifths  in  Germany  and  Holland; 
a  little  more  than  one-half  in  Switzerland,  British  Amer- 
ica, Dutch  and  Danish  West  Indies ;  four-fifths  in  British 
West  Indies,  United  States,  and  Greenland;  more  than 
half  in  British  South  Africa,  Transvaal  and  Orange  River 
Republic;  nearly  one-third  in  Madagascar  and  Polynesia; 
nearly  seven-tenths  in  Australia;  and  very  scantily  suc- 
cessful missions  in  parts  of  Asia  and  Africa  (the  most 
numerous  not  exceeding  7  converts  to  every  1000  inhabi- 
tants of  the  region). 

(2)  About  1500  A,  D.^  For  this  and  other  past  pe- 
riods I  have  not  been  able  to  find  published  maps.  Hence 
there  was  no  choice  but  to  extemporize  the  study.     To 

*  See  also  historic  maps  of  the  period. 


36  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

do  this  roughly  from  historic  data  is  not  a  very  difficult 
task.  I  have  therefore  made  this  sketch  to  show  the  re- 
ligious condition  of  the  world  at  some  of  the  great  epochs 
in  religious  history.  We  may  say  in  general  that  at  the 
year  1500  there  was  no  Protestantism,  America  was  un- 
known to  Europeans  and  belonged  to  the  Indians,  Moham- 
medanism had  reached  its  arm  into  South-Eastern  Europe 
but  had  not  pushed  far  southward  into  Africa  nor  far 
eastward  into  Asia,  while  the  Orient  was  scarcely  known, 
though  its  conditions  were  then  nearly  what  they  are  now. 
We  may  sum  up  the  distribution  in  general  thus: 

Romish  Christianity  occupied  Europe  west  of  Russia, 
Turkey  and  Greece. 

Greek  Christianity  covered  South-western  Russia,  parts 
of  Turkey,  Greece,  Asia  Minor,  Northern  Egypt,  and 
Abyssinia. 

Mohammedanism  had  just  been  expelled  from  Spain, 
and  now  ruled  the  north  coast  of  Africa,  Arabia,  Persia, 
Asia  Minor,  parts  of  Turkey,  scattering  peoples  to  the  east 
of  the  Caspian  Sea,  and  to  a  considerable  extent  into  North- 
ern India. 

A  Modified  Brahmanism  took  the  place  of  the  ancient 
faith  in  the  unsubjugated  parts  of  Aryan  India,  while  Bud- 
dhism had  for  a  couple  of  centuries  been  expelled. 

Buddhism  itself  had  spread  everywhere  east  and  north 
into  Farther  India,  Thibet,  China,  Corea,  and  Japan. 

Of  the  rest  of  the  world, — America,  Africa,  Australia, 
and  Polynesia, — we  can  only  conjecture  from  their  later 
character  and  the  fact  that  their  ideas  in  all  the  fields  of 
civilization  were  very  slow  to  move. 

(3)  About  A,  D,  This  marks  another  of  those  great 
epochs  in  which  transformations  begin.  We  have  a  very 
different  religious  world  to  picture  to  ourselves.  There 
was  as  yet  no  Christianity,  no  Mohammedanism,  and  Bud- 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  2i7, 

dhism  had  not  traveled  to  Thibet,  China,  or  Japan.  Then 
too,  many  of  the  old  faiths  were  still  living. 

Judaism  was  limited  to  the  little  Roman  colony  of  Pal- 
estine. 

Zeus  and  Jupiter  were  yet  reigning,  but  with  enfeebled 
power  in  Greece  and  Italy. 

Odin  and  Thor  inspired  and  checked  the  fierce  hordes 
of  Teutons  north  of  the  Alps, 

The  Celtic  Druids  managed  the  faith  of  the  Britons. 

Osiris  and  Isis  were  sinking  into  oblivion  in  Egypt. 

Ahura  Mazda,  although  temporarily  weakened  by  as- 
saults from  the  West,  yet  commanded  the  reverence  of  most 
Persian  hearts. 

Buddhism  had  won  the  ascendency  in  India  from  Pun- 
jab to  Ceylon. 

Confucianism  held  well-nigh  unmolested  sway  in  China. 

Of  the  rest  of  the  world  we  know  nothing,  except  what 
archaeology  is  beginning  to  reveal. 

(4)  About  400-500  B.  C.  Here  we  stand  on  the  thresh- 
old of  one  of  the  greatest  epochs  in  history.  Mighty 
changes  were  soon  to  be  effected  in  various  parts  of  the 
world.  New  tendencies  of  mind  and  morals  are  being 
born,  and  the  political  face  of  the  world  is  putting  on  new 
aspects.  The  center  of  political  power  is  in  the  Medo- 
Persian  Empire,  which  is  now  at  its  height.  Greece  too 
has  reached  the  acme  of  its  glory  and  receives  an  irre- 
coverable blow  from  the  monarch  of  the  East.  The  Roman 
Republic  (yet  very  small)  has  just  started  on  its  stormy 
and  brilliant  career.  The  Jews  have  been  carried  into 
captivity.  Babylon  and  Nineveh  are  falling.  Socrates 
(470-399),  Buddha  (560-480),  and  Confucius  (550-478) 
are  now  living  and  have  begun  to  turn  out  the  past  and 
usher  in  the  future.  Surely  change  on  a  great  scale  was 
taking  place  in  men's  spirits  when  in  three  such  widely 


38  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

sundered  regions  as  China,  India,  and  Greece,  the  con- 
ditions had  become  such  that  minds  Hke  these  could  and 
must  be  developed.  Two  things  are  suggested.  First,  the 
religious  notions  of  the  past  were  so  old  as  to  be  worn 
out.  Then  again,  the  nature  conditions  of  the  past  had 
reached  a  stage  where  higher  moral  ground  was  possible, 
was  necessary.  In  these  great  personalities  we  have  the 
mouth-pieces  of  the  higher  things  ready  to  be  spoken  in 
those  lands.  Here  were  crises  of  opportunities  which 
floated  men  into  eternal  fame.  In  other  lands,  before  and 
since,  has  the  like  occurred.  In  Persia,  ages  before  this 
the  old  religion  died  and  the  new  was  spoken  by  Zara- 
thustra.  In  Palestine  ages  later  the  old  formalistic  Juda- 
ism was  to  be  set  away  into  obscurity  by  the  living  prac- 
tical moral  gospel  of  Jesus.  In  Arabia,  after  still  farther 
ages,  the  old  nature  worship  and  animism  was  to  be  re- 
placed through  Mohammed  by  the  call  to  Islam  (Salva- 
tion) and  the  worship  of  Allah  alone. 

2.  Statistics, — ^The  enumeration  or  estimate  of  the  num- 
ber of  adherents  to  the  various  religions  is  a  work  as  yet 
beset  with  insuperable  difficulties.  In  the  first  place,  there 
is  no  reliable  census  taken  among  more  than  half  the  peo- 
ples of  the  globe.  Of  the  1540  millions  estimated  to  be 
living  at  present,  only  700  millions  may  be  considered  as 
counted  fairly  well.  A  people  must  have  reached  a  very 
high  social  stage  of  civilization  before  the  census  sense 
becomes  operative,  and  some  of  those  who  would  be  sup- 
posed from  their  development  otherwise  to  have  an  interest 
in  knowing  their  numbers,  etc.,  seem  to  have  none.  When 
besides  the  so-called  savage  and  barbarous  world,  which 
includes  the  natives  of  America,  Polynesia,  Australia,  most 
of  Africa,  and  Northern  Asia,  is  added  the  indifference  of 
many  of  the  civilized  nations,  the  difficulty  begins  to  show 
its  greatness.  As  an  illustration  or  two  of  the  latter,  I 
might  remark  that  the  population  of    Constantinople  is 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  39 

not  known,  and  the  census  of  Cuba  has  never  been  carefully 
taken. 

Then  as  to  the  question  of  making  estimates,  there  are 
double  and  triple  uncertainties.  First,  in  many  of  these 
uncounted  regions  the  population  is  so  changeable  from 
time  to  time  as  to  defy  even  respectable  estimates.  The 
nomadic  and  emigrating  tendencies  of  many  peoples  are 
things  hard  to  take  into  consideration.  They  are  in  this 
way  liable  to  be  counted  twice  or  not  to  be  counted  at  all. 
This  is  further  increased  by  the  wide-spread  practice  of 
kidnapping  slaves  and  wives.  Other  factors,  are  the  great 
variations  of  populations  produced  by  unequal  birth  rates. 
Professor  Ratzel  of  Leipsic  cites  the  case  of  a  single  small 
village  in  Bavaria  of  which  he  examined  the  baptismal 
records  for  a  period  covering  some  250  years,  and  found 
variations  in  the  number  of  births  from  170  to  38  for  dif- 
ferent decades  with  an  almost  invariable  village  popula- 
tion. Many  examinations  of  this  kind  go  to  show  that 
increase  of  populations,  among  other  things,  depends  much 
on  the  outlook  of  the  people.  Besides  this  to-a-large- 
extent-unconsciously  sterile  or  prolific  tendency,  there  are 
the  facts  of  infanticide  and  suicide,  both  of  which  prevail 
at  times  to  an  unbelievable  extent  among  some  nations. 
Again,  there  are  various  races,  which  through  contact 
with  higher  civilizations  and  from  other  causes,  are  in  a 
state  of  constant  decline  in  numbers.  Some  have  already 
died  out  entirely  (Tasmanians,  etc.)  ;  others  are  fast  de- 
creasing (Indians,  Maori,  etc.).  And  lastly,  three  of  the 
mightiest  factors  having  to  do  with  this  uncertainty  and 
variation  in  the  world's  population,  are  famine,  pestilence, 
and  war.  In  some  lands  and  at  some  times  the  proportion 
is  very  greatly  disturbed  by  these.  Happer,  an  English 
writer  on  the  Chinese,  tells  of  63,000,000  having  perished 
by  hunger  since  1812.  And  some  one  (Meadows  I  think) 
says  that  30,000,000  Chinese  perished  in  a  single  rebellion. 


40  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

In  India  the  populations  of  certain  regions  are  occasionally 
terribly  reduced  by  either  famine  or  cholera.  War  not 
infrequently  decimates  the  male  population  and  seriously 
disturbs  the  naturally  balanced  numerical  relations  of  the 
sexes.  These  factors  put  together  go  to  show  that  there 
might  be  such  a  science  as  the  pathology  of  population. 

When  to  all  these  difficulties  in  the  formation  of  esti- 
mates of  the  numbers  living  either  now  or  in  the  past,  is 
added  the  variations  in  the  actual  estimates  made  by  trav- 
elers and  investigators,  the  case  begins  to  look  like  a  hope- 
less one.  How  great  this  confusion  may  threaten  to  be, 
may  be  better  appreciated  if  I  state,  that  the  population  of 
China  has  during  recent  years  been  variously  calculated 
from  150  to  450  millions.  The  most  reliable  figures,  how- 
ever, range  between  370  and  420  millions,  the  latter  being 
the  sum  given  by  Tseng,  a  Chinese  statistician.  ( In  A.  D. 
57  China  had  21  millions.) 

But  to  come  closer  to  the  question  of  calculating  the 
votaries  of  the  different  faiths  of  the  world,  it  must  be 
observed  that  the  problem  would  be  far  from  solved  even 
if  we  could  count  the  peoples  of  the  various  lands,  though 
enumeration  on  the  best  approximation  of  these  is  the  only 
result  yet  or  perhaps  ever  possible.  Statistics  of  religion 
in  general  can  do  no  more  than  collect  the  aggregates  of 
population  in  various  lands  and  divide  the  sums  among 
the  faiths  supposed  to  predominate  in  those  various  re- 
gions. But  this  is  almost  the  loosest  sort  of  generaliza- 
tion, and  has  no  solider  basis  than  the  assumption  that 
peoples  living  under  the  same  general  environment  and  in 
the  regions  where  certain  doctrines  have  been  extensively 
preached,  must  have  the  same  religious  outlook.  The  as- 
sumption has  some  truth  on  its  side.  Such  peoples  must 
necessarily  have  more  in  common  and  possess  a  greater 
similarity  of  theory  and  practice  than  those  who  are  widely 
separated  and  who  are  surrounded  by  very  different  cir- 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  4I 

cumstances  of  life.  Yet  this  assumption  and  method,  with- 
out qualification,  leave  no  room  for  the  play  of  individual- 
ity. Though  the  intelligent  thinking  Chinaman  is  far  nearer 
the  religious  point  of  view  of  Buddhism  than  he  is  of 
Protestant  Christianity,  and  though  the  scientifically  in- 
clined European  or  American  is  probably  more  in  sympathy 
with  the  latter  than  he  is  with  the  former,  yet  it  is  straining 
the  category  of  either  name  to  class  such  men  with  the 
mass  of  their  countrymen  who  subscribe  to  these  confes- 
sions and  their  ordinances.  And  this  class  of  non-con- 
formists in  all  civilized  countries,  though  never  conspicuous 
or  exactly  ascertainable,  must  be  somewhat  numerous,  the 
more  so  in  proportion  to  the  liberty  and  intelligence  of  the 
people.  Hence  when  it  is  stated  that  the  number  of  Chris- 
tians or  Buddhists  is  so  and  so,  we  perceive  the  necessity  of 
discounting  the  estimate  to  a  considerable  extent  from  this 
reason  alone.  I  should  remark  in  passing,  that  the  in- 
accuracy of  religious  statistics  in  failing  to  represent  the 
individualism  and  independence  of  many,  may  be  and  is  in 
part  remedied  in  what  we  term  sectarian  statistics.  Yet 
this  can  never  appear  in  those  general  estimates  of  the 
religions  of  the  world,  and  consequently  our  cautions  re- 
main in  full  force.  We  must  further  make  the  perhaps 
yet  greater  deduction  of  that  multitude  of  indifferent  per- 
sons to  be  found  everywhere.  Almost  every  neighborhood 
numbers  its  scores  who  give  little  or  no  attention  to  the 
question  of  religion  in  any  of  the  usual  senses.  These  two 
classes  in  the  aggregate  seriously  diminish  the  accuracy 
of  our  customary  estimates.  Nevertheless  we  must  make 
them  as  best  we  can,  and  learn  from  them  what  we  may. 
The  most  remarkable  interest  in  the  scientific  study  of 
religions  and  of  religion  was  manifest  in  the  period  between 
the  later  70's  and  the  early  90's  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
The  labors  accomplished  by  Max  Miiller,  Rhys  Davids, 
Tiele,  Sayce,  Bournouf,  Kuenen,  Whitney,  Spencer,  Pflei- 


42 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 


derer,  Brinton,  Reville,  Johnson,  Carus,  and  their  many  co- 
workers, began  another  epoch  in  religious  history.  The 
inftuence  of  this  work  brought  about  the  World's  Congress 
of  Religions  at  Chicago  in  1893;  ^^^  its  continuation  in  a 
hundred  ways  is  steadily  modifying  the  religious  outlook, 
not  only  of  Christendom  but  of  the  peoples  who  have  for 
centuries  held  to  the  other  historic  faiths. 

( I )  T,  W,  Rhys  Davids,  the  eminent  English  Oriental 
scholar  and  authority  on  Buddhism,  gives  the  population 
of  the  world  and  of  the  various  religions  as  follows.  (See 
his  Buddhism  J  etc.) 


RELIGIONS 

NUMBERS 

Jews 

Mohammedans  . 



7,000,000 
155,000,000 

75,000,000 1 
152,000,000  1 327,000,000 

100,000,000  J 

160,000,000 

500,000,000 

150,000 

1,200,000 

100,000,000 

Greek  Christian 

Roman  Catholic  Christian  

Protestant  Christian  

Brahmanism  .  .  . 
Buddhism 



Parsees  

Sikhs 

Heathen 



1,250,350,000 

(2)  The  Justus  Perthes  Geographische  Anstalt  of  Go- 
tha,  one  of  the  highest  statistical  authorities  in  the  world, 


RELIGIONS 

MILLIONS 

PERCENT 

Christians 

200 

150 

87 

8 

445 

170 

7 
852 

30.2 
13.6 
10  2 

Catholics 

Protestants 

Greek  Orthodox 

5-9 
0.5 

11.5 
0.5 

57.8 

Others 

Mohammedans 

Israelites 

Heathen 

1474 

100. 

THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 


43 


gives  the  preceding  figures.  ( See  Taschen- Atlas,  22.  Aufl. 
von  Hermann  Habenicht.  Mit  geogr.-stat.  Notizen  [by 
H.  Wichmann],  1886.) 

In  this  connection  I  will  give  for  future  reference  the 
same  authority's  figures  on  the  numbers  of  the  principal 
races  of  the  world. 


RACES 

MILLION 

PER  CENT 

African  and  Semites 

176 

33 

10 

40 

586 

631 

II. 9 
2.2 

Oceanic 

American 

0.7 

Dravidian 

2.7 

Mongolian  .       

39.7 
42.8 

Indo-Eurooean          

1476 

100. 

(3)  From  G,  Droysen's  Hist orischer  Hand- Atlas,  1886, 
a  most  excellent  outline  work,  I  take  the  following  esti- 
mates (p.  92). 


RELIGIONS 

Christians 

Mohammedans  .  .. 

Buddhists 

Brahmanists 

Heathen 


NUMBERS 


442,351,000 
186,356,000 
447,969,780 
187,947450 
92,182,340 


1,356,806,570 


(4)  Meyers  Hand-Lexikon  (3.  Aufl.,  1885)  gives  a 
careful  statistical  analysis  of  the  general  religious  con- 
dition of  the  world  drawn  from  the  most  recent  enumera- 
tions and  estimates.  In  the  following  summary  I  have 
divided  the  687  millions  set  down  there  as  the  "worshipers 
of  Brahma  and  Buddha''  into  four  groups,  viz.,  Hinduism, 
Parseeism,  Sikhism,  and  Buddhism,  leaving  the  total  the 
same,  while  putting  for  the  three  latter  the  numbers  given 
by  Rhys  Davids  (II,  p.  1611). 


44 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 


KELIGIONS 

MILLIONS 

Protestant  Christianity 

131 

210 

92 

6"/«,' 

196 

i85"Ao 

1V30 
500 
i28"Ao 

Roman  Catholic  Christianity 

[    433 

Greek  Christianity 

Judaism 

Mohammedanism 

Hinduism  

Parseeism 

-  1018*/^ 

Sikhism 

Buddhism 

Others 

1451%. 

(5)  A  later  estimate  (culled  from  various  sources,  but 
not  so  carefully  discriminated)  is  found  in  a  Beilage  to  the 
Allgemeine  Zeitung  for  January,  1901.  Some  of  the  re- 
sults of  this  estimate  are  given  in  Appleton's  American 
(Annual)  Cyclopedia,  3d  Ser.,  Vol.  VI,  (for  1901) 


RELIGIONS.  ADHERENTS. 

Christians     501,600,000 

Roman  Catholics 240,000,000 

Protestants  163,300,000 

Greek  Catholics 98,300,000 

Mohammedans  . 167,200,000 

Jews 7,100,000 

Pagans  (largely  Buddhist  and  Brahmin)  667,800,000 

Heathen  ( Savage)  95,400,000 

1,439,100,000 


The  same  authority  gives  the  world's  population  as 
1,544,509,000. 

The  figures  for  the  adherents  of  Roman  Catholicism 
are  given  by  Mulhall  in  1898  as  200,450,000. 

The  Jewish  Year  Book  for  1902  gives  the  total  number 
of  Jews  in  the  world  as  10,378,530. 

The  official  estimate  of  the  Turkish  government  gives 
the  total  number  of  Mohammedans  in  the  world  as  176- 


THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS.  45 

000,000  for  about  the  year  1900;   while  Mr.  Mann  in  the 
North  American  Review,  1900,  increases  the  sum  to  200- 

313,845. 

This  result  I  have  used  in  another  way  to  make  an 
object  lesson.  If  a  surface  be  laid  out  with  38%©  units  on 
each  side,  it  will  contain  i45^%o  square  units.  By  using 
different  colors  and  coloring  as  many  squares  as  each 
religion  has  millions  of  adherents,  their  comparative  fol- 
lowings  may  be  strikingly  perceived  at  a  glance. 

C.  CLASSIFICATIONS  BASED  ON  PHILOSOPHIES  OF  RELIGION. 

SUBJECTIVE. 

I.  Professor  PHeiderer  of  Berlin,  in  a  work  entitled: 
Die  Religion,  ihr  Wesen  und  ihre  Geschichte  (2  Bande, 
1869),  developed  a  division  of  which  he  said:  "Wir  hoffen, 
dass  diese  Einleitung  der  Religionen  liberhaupt  und  der 
heidnischen  insbesondere  sich  durch  die  Verbindung  ge- 
schichtlicher  Treue  mit  begrifflicher  Scharfe  von  selbst 
empfehlen,  und  dass  sie  auch  vor  der  strengsten  Kritik 
jener  Empiriker,  welche  gegen  jedwede  begriffliche  Sche- 
matisirung  stets  misstrauisch  sind,  standhalten  werde.'' 
(II,  p.  60.)  He  bases  it  on  an  attempted  psychological 
analysis  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  religion,  the 
ground  basis  of  piety.  Here  is  to  be  sought  the  one  un- 
derived  reality  to  which  all  else  is  accidental.  The  reason 
that  previous  divisions  have  proved  untenable  is,  according 
to  Pfleiderer's  mind,  that  they  have  been  based  on  secon- 
dary phenomena  instead  of  being  founded  in  the  essence 
of  religion  itself.  In  such  divisions  there  are  always  cer- 
tain points  which  will  not  stand  the  pressure  of  the  facts. 
But  he  says :  "Die  I.eichtigkeit  hingegen,  mit  welcher  hier 
der  geschichtliche  Stoff  sich  subsumirt  unter  den  begriff- 
lichen  Schematismus,  ist  ein  Beweis  fur  die  Richtigkeit 
des  Eintheilungsprinzips,  also  schliesslich  noch  ein  Beweis 
fiir  die  richtige  Fassung  des  Begriffs  der  Religion,  wel- 


46  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

chem  das  Eintheilungsprinzip  entnommen  wurde."  Here 
is  confidence  enough.  It  should  indeed  be  an  excellent 
theory  to  warrant  so  much.  We  will  look  at  it  and  hear  its 
later  fate.    (See  Chart.) 

In  the  first  place,  its  geneology  must  be  observed.  It 
will  be  remembered  from  the  discussion  upon  the  psycho- 
logical origin  of  the  religious  nature,*  that  Schleiermacher 
founded  it  in  feeling  and  made  its  essence  to  consist  of  a 
sense  of  absolute  dependence,  and  that  Hegel  laid  its  basis 
wholly  in  thought  arid  found  its  essence  to  be  sense  of  free- 
dom, the  more  unlimited  and  the  higher  it  rose  the  more 
religious.  Both  theories  were  paraded  to  excess  by  their 
respective  followers,  and  received  the  hardest  criticism  from 
the  other  side  and  from  outsiders.  Indeed,  one  may  almost 
say  that  the  history  of  these  views  constitutes  the  history 
of  religious  philosophical  discussion  during  the  last  fifty 
to  seventy-five  years,  especially  in  Germany.  It  became 
more  and  more  manifest  (except  to  the  most  blinded  parti- 
sans) that  neither  view  was  able  to  hold  the  ground.  A 
new  theory  or  a  compromise  was  the  only  resort.  The 
former  was  out  of  the  question  on  any  of  the  old  bases. 
Kant  had  preempted  the  will,  Schleiermacher  the  feeling, 
and  Hegel  the  intellect,  each  severally  as  the  ground  for 
his  structure.  There  was  no  other  region  known,  and  there 
happened  to  be  no  passion  for  discovery  at  that  time.  In 
this  embarrassment  Professor  Pfleiderer  (then  at  Tii- 
bingen)  came  forward  with  a  theory  compromising  be- 
tween the  views  of  Schleiermacher  and  Hegel.  He  admits 
the  ground  claims  of  both,  but  will  have  none  of  the  ex- 
clusiveness  of  either.  Neither  is  complete  alone,  nor  are 
they  sufficient  by  adding  them  together  in  a  mere  com- 
promise. They  must  be  melted  together,  must  be  blended 
into  a  perfect  unity,  a  unity  of  such  a  peculiar  type  that 
neither  looses  its  essential  character,  while  each  mutually 

*  See  How  Religion  arises — A  Psychological  Study,  by  Duren  J.  H.  Ward 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 


47 


admits  the  exercise  of  the  other  to  the  fullest  extent ;  indeed, 
each  in  this  fullest  exercise  of  the  other  comes  to  get  in 

PFLEIDERER'S   PHILOSOPHICAL   CLASSIFICATION 
OF   RELIGION. 

^ A , 


I 


,The  two  elements  of  religion. 


o   5: 


W  td 
g  2 


Extreme  Partiality. 
(One  or  the  other  moment  holds  almost  entire  con- 
trol.) 


Unequal  Recognition. 
(The  two  moments  tending  toward  equilibrium.) 


W 


> 

§ 

< 

r  ^ 

2 

a 

oq* 

> 
2 

g 

133    O 
o    » 

>  2 


O 

2.  c 

i  3 

»   5 


(A 


Balancing. 
(Each  moment  having  its  relative  claim  admitted.) 


Christianity. 
Blending. 
(Both  absolutely  realized,  each  through  the  other.) 


this  way,  and  in  this  way  only,  its  own  fullest  play  and 
activity.    This  is  truly  a  great  insight.    Such  a  work  were 


48  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

as  really  a  discovery  as  the  development  of  the  onesided 
views  which  it  wrought  into  a  higher  view. 

He  lays  out  the  ground  somewhat  as  follows:  "Das 
Wesen  des  frommen  Selbstbewusstseins  an  und  fiir  sich" 
is  the  only  factor  conceivable  for  a  sharp  or  exact  division. 
In  this  he  finds  two  constituting  moments:  freedom  and 
dependence.  In  and  for  themselves  each  claims  full  and 
unlimited  sway.  Hence  arises  conflict  and  struggle  be- 
tween them.  The  various  relations  growing  out  of  these 
two  moments  of  religious  life  form  a  comprehensible  and 
sharply  fixed  basis  of  division.  If  in  a  religion  one  is  pre- 
dominant we  see  its  essential  characteristic,  and  so  if  the 
other;  but  if  we  see  them  standing  in  an  equilibrium  of 
validity,  we  recognize  the  approach  to  the  perfect.  Their 
unequal  coexistence  will  be  found  to  be  the  common  char- 
acteristic of  the  heathen  religions,  while  their  greater  bal- 
ance is  the  chief  mark  of  the  monotheisms.  These  mono- 
theisms again  are  divisible  on  the  ground  as  to  whether 
the  two  elements  only  relatively  have  their  rights  recog- 
nized, or  w^hether  this  mutually  recognized  right  becomes 
a  completely  blended  realization.  Christianity  represents 
the  latter,  Judaism  and  Islam  the  former.  In  Christianity 
is  the  fullest  freedom  reached  only  when  the  fullest  de- 
pendence is  realized.  (See  2  Cor.  iii.  17,  also  Luke  ix.  24.) 
Judaism  and  Mohammedanism  hold  to  both  of  these  ele- 
ments, but  in  such  a  way  as  to  resemble  two  poles  which 
though  inseparable  yet  stand  over  against  each  other  in  op- 
position. In  these  religions  man  feels  himself  free  and  also 
dependent,  but  the  two  are  not  so  blended  that  he  finds  his 
freedom  in  his  dependence,  and  at  the  same  time  the  satis- 
faction of  his  own  will  in  the  service  of  God.  In  them 
the  one  moment  leaves  ofif  when  and  where  the  other  be- 
gins. 

Not  so  in  Heathenism.  Sometimes  an  overpowering 
sense  of  dependence,  sometimes  an  unlimited  notion  of  free- 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  49 

dom  are  the  characterizing  elements.  Never  are  both  rec- 
ognized, never  do  they  stand  in  equipoise,  never  do  they 
blend  in  pious  experience.  Both  being  indestructible  ele- 
ments, neither  is  ever  wholly  lost,  and  even  in  greatest 
subjection,  the  unrecognized  factor  reacts  with  what  weak 
powers  it  has  left.  Yet  when  vigorous  reaction  comes,  it 
too  is  just  as  onesided.  In  the  heathen  mind  these  elements 
are  so  unbalanced  that  they  do  not  stand  as  in  Judaism 
merely  out  of  and  beside  each  other,  but  stand  in  a  relation 
of  opposition,  of  againstness,  or  of  contradiction  to  each 
other.  In  this  opposed  way  each  is  false  from  the  other's 
point  of  view.  One  of  the  two  chief  tendencies  will  be 
taken  by  the  religious  mind  on  the  stage  of  pure  nature. 
Either  man  gives  himself  up  entirely  to  his  dependent 
sense,  regards  himself  as  on  all  sides  determined  and  at 
the  disposal  of  the  Divine  All-life,  in  which  case  the  nat- 
ural will  seeks  by  the  satisfaction  of  the  natural  im- 
pulses to  compensate  itself  all  the  more  because  of  this 
resignation.  This  accounts  for  the  mixture  of  resigned 
self-sacrifice  (asceticism)  and  gross  sensuality  in  the  pan- 
theistic nature  religions.  On  the  other  hand,  man  realizes 
his  dependence  little,  an  overflowing  fulness  of  life  gives 
an  overpowering  feeling  of  freedom  from  the  control  of 
the  finite  and  limited  gods  of  nature.  He  is,  to  be  sure, 
in  a  measure  dependent  on  them,  since  he  prays  for  their 
help ;  but  at  the  same  time  he  thinks  to  compel  them  into 
his  service  through  the  craft  or  force  of  his  magic  and 
divine  exorcisms.  The  real  feeling  of  dependence  now 
reacts  in  the  fear  of  an  unconditioned  might  standing  yet 
higher  than  the  gods,  a  blind  necessity  or  fate.  This  is 
everywhere  at  the  back  of  polytheism,  hard  and  oppressive 
in  proportion  as  the  gods  are  believed  to  be  limited.  In 
the  stage  of  development  which  precedes  what  we  term 
the  beginning  of  civilization,  this  contrast  of  freedom  and 
dependence  is  at  its  strongest.     With  the  entrance  of  a 


^  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

higher  social  condition  in  the  taking  on  of  family  and  civic 
relations  this  sharp  division  is  toned  down  somewhat.  The 
individual  begins,  by  the  suggestions  and  incentives  which 
these  impose  upon  him,  to  recognize  himself  as  belonging 
to  a  law-ordered  whole.  The  sensuous  will  of  man  is  re- 
strained by  custom  and  law  till  he  feels  his  dependence  on 
society,  but  at  the  same  time  he  is  lifted  into  a  higher  free- 
dom in  that  to  his  previously  selfish  interest  there  is  given 
now  the  greater  content  of  a  more  universal  aim,  or  inter- 
est. This  filling  out  of  the  sense  of  freedom  with  moral 
content  and  the  drawing  of  the  sense  of  dependence  toward 
moral  powers  (deities)  gradually  destroys  the  conflict  be- 
tween them.  The  Greeks  or  Romans  who  had  received 
this  moral  and  civic  culture  no  longer  feared  that  blind 
fate  above  the  gods;  but  fate  became  to  them  gradually 
more  and  more  the  rational  will  of  a  Zeus  who  was  the 
bearer  of  the  natural  world-order,  or  of  a  Jupiter  Capito- 
linus  who  was  the  supporter  of  the  Roman  idea  of  the 
State.  On  the  other  hand,  the  cultured  Chinaman,  who 
before  had  been  borne  down  by  a  stupid  resignation  to  his 
complete  dependence  on  the  irrational  life  of  nature,  felt 
this  no  longer  in  the  former  way ;  but  as  the  notion  of  his 
State-relations  took  hold  on  his  life,  his  dependence  rec- 
ognized itself  as  leaning  on  an  essentially  rational  whole. 
In  both  examples,  however,  the  moral  and  civic  relations 
are  imperfect,  their  powers  of  influence  are  only  relatively 
universal,  hence  the  will  in  dependence  on  them  does  not 
arrive  to  a  perfect  freedom,  i.  e.,  the  two  do  not  become 
inwardly  fully  reconciled  to  each  other.  A  third  stage  to 
be  noticed  in  the  cultivated  nature  religion,  he  calls  the 
supernatural.  This  is  where  the  deified  powers  are  no 
longer  the  natural  powers  merely.  A  fundamental  breach 
is  made  with  nature,  yet  not  to  the  extent  that  a  positive 
supernatural  world  is  attained,  nor  to  the  denial  of  all  the 
old  nature  powers.    There  is  spirit  worship  of  the  higher 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  5I 

sort  along  with  many  elements  of  nature-religion.  Of 
this  sort  are  Brahmanism  and  Buddhism  on  the  one  side, 
and  Zarathustrianism  on  the  other.  Both  have  escaped 
the  limits  of  the  finite,  in  nature  as  well  as  the  State,  and 
are  consequently  to  be  distinguished  from  the  previous 
stages.  They  form  indeed  a  sort  of  pre-stage  to  a  mono- 
theistic religion.  There  is  yet  between  them  a  contrasted 
onesidedness :  since  in  the  Indian  religions  the  false  de- 
pendence on  the  finite  is  broken  by  the  release  from  sen- 
suous self-torture  (in  Buddhism  also  of  mental)  without 
attaining  to  a  positive  freedom  in  the  infinite ;  while  in  the 
Persian,  though  the  freedom  is  placed  as  the  absolute  aim 
of  divine  things,  yet  it  never  reaches  to  the  abolition  of  a 
dependence  on  the  ungodly.  The  remnants  of  a  former 
naturalism  yet  remain  in  its  strong  dualism. 


Complete  and  invulnerable  as  the  author's  enthusiasm 
led  him  to  boast  his  theory  and  classification  to  be,  it  was 
not  complete  enough  to  win  his  own  assent  a  few  years 
later.  He  has  re-written  the  whole  topic  a  couple  of  times 
since,  and  has  finally  himself  abandoned  the  theory  which 
was  to  have  resisted  the  strongest  criticism  of  opposing 
schools  through  its  "combination  of  historical  fidelity  and 
exactness  of  comprehension.''  In  his  more  recent  work, 
Religionsphilosophie  auf  geschichtlicher  Grundlage,  he  pro- 
poses another  theory  and  a  different  basis  of  division. 
According  to  the  view  being  here  developed,  he  is  as  much 
at  fault  for  abandoning  this  division  as  he  was  at  first  for 
making  it  and  supposing  it  to  be  final.  One  would  have  to 
abandon  each  latest  view  on  the  same  ground  and  in  the 
same  way,  if  he  lived  and  remained  as  fertile  and  progres- 
sive minded  as  heretofore.  The  difficulty  lies  not  so  much 
in  the  great  faultiness  of  the  classification  principle,  but 
in  supposing  it  could    do  the  work  of    other  classifica- 


52  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

tions.  For  its  legitimate  purposes  it  is  most  excellent. 
One  cannot  look  upon  it  carefully  without  being  impressed 
with  the  amount  of  truth  that  it  teaches.  Like  the  other 
attempts  which  we  have  looked  at,  it  has  its  importance. 
It  is  no  fault  of  a  theory  that  it  is  misused,  or  that  un- 
reasonable confidence  is  placed  in  it  or  immodest  claims 
made  for  it.  Our  theories  would  often  serve  us  better 
than  they  do,  if  we  could  estimate  them  for  what  they 
are :  not  finalities,  but  theories,  working  hypotheses,  points 
of  view,  means  of  insight,  etc.  It  is  a  very  poor  one  indeed 
that  is  not  of  some  service;  it  is  a  most  excellent  one 
indeed  that  does  not  soon  run  us  into  errors,  extravagances, 
and  dangers,  if  we  push  its  application. 

The  way  in  which  Professor  Pfleiderer  applied  this 
theory  to  the  various  religions  would  seem  to  indicate, 
whether  he  intended  it  or  not,  that  he  regarded  religion 
as  a  projected  morality.  Observe  especially  the  remarks 
about  the  cultured  Greek,  Roman,  and  Chinaman.  To  do 
this  would  be  to  limit  it  in  actual  fact  to  morality,  when 
we  undeceive  ourselves  as  to  the  source  of  the  projected 
objects  of  worship  and  of  our  relationships.  Our  only 
excuse  for  longer  letting  our  moral  conceptions  take  such 
objectified  form  would  be,  that  it  added  a  greater  glow 
of  enthusiasm  and  romance  to  our  actual  moral  relations 
to  think  them  in  such  a  manner,  or  that  it  were  best  for 
the  common  folk  to  have  this  sort  of  supernatural  outlook. 

Again  the  chief  or  pivotal  terms  of  the  division,  free- 
dom and  dependence,  are  not  used  throughout  in  the  same 
sense,  as  will  be  seen  by  a  thoughtful  examination.  At 
the  start  they  are  the  fundamental  elements  of  all  pious 
feeling,  but  later  it  would  seem  that  one  or  the  other  had, 
in  his  mind  (especially  the  sense  of  freedom),  become  the 
all-absorbing,  all-worthy  element.  On  this,  witness  his 
discrimination  regarding  the  Persian  religion,  where  the 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 


m 


sense  of  dependence  is  indicated  as  though  belonging  to  the 
character  of  mind  which  debases  itself  before  demons. 

The  position  in  the  plan  to  which  he  assigns  both  Bud- 
dhism and  Islam  are  entirely  wrong  in  my  opinion.  The 
prominent  characteristics  of  the  former  place  it  under  free- 
dom, those  of  the  latter  assign  it  to  the  side  of  dependence. 

Another  remark  should  be  passed,  viz.,  that  we  would 
be  led  by  this  theory  to  place  too  high  an  estimate  on  aver- 
age Christianity;  since,  except  in  the  very  highest  cases, 
has  there  neither  in  Christianity,  Judaism,  or  Moham- 
medanism ever  been  more  than  a  practical  adjustment  or 
compromise  between  these  two  fundamental  elements.  Such 
a  consummation  were  devoutly  to  be  wished,  and  such  a 
classification  or  analysis  would  have  inestimable  value  if 
its  calling  attention  to  these  relations  aided  in  any  way  so 
practical  an  end.  One  can  scarcely  doubt  that  here  is  an 
attempted  expression  of  one  of  the  deepest  features  and 
relations  of  the  religious  life,  and  though  its  full  and  satis- 
factory explanation  may  yet  be  unaccomplished,  we  become 
convinced  that  it  has  in  it  a  profound  reality. 

D.    CLASSIFICATIONS    BASED    ON    RACIAL   RELATIONSHIP. 
GENEALOGICAL. 

I.  According  to  Linguistic  AiHnity, 

Prof.  Max  Miiller  (Introd.  to  the  Science  of  Religion, 
p.  143  ff.)  says:  "The  only  scientific  and  truly  genetic 
classification  of  religions  is  the  same  as  the  classification 
of  languages.  Particularly  in  the  early  history  of  the 
human  intellect,  there  exists  the  most  intimate  relationship 
between  language,  religion,  and  nationality."  The  out- 
ward appearance,  tangibility,  or  framework  of  religion  in 
early  times,  that  by  which  it  was  communicable  from  heart 
to  heart,  centered  around  a  few  words  and  expressions 
pertaining  to  deity,  sacrifice,  altar,  prayer,  possibly  body, 


54  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

soul,  virtue,  sin.  "Early  religion  and  early  language 
are  most  intimately  connected,  religion  depending  entirely 
for  its  outward  expression  on  the  more  or  less  adequate 
resources  of  language.''  To  understand  this  clearly,  is 
to  arrive  at  a  basis  for  the  most  useful  classification  of 
religions.  Whatever  genetic  relationships  exist  between 
languages  "ought  to  hold  together  the  religions  of  the 
world,  at  least  the  most  ancient  religions." 

In  Asia,  with  its  most  important  peninsula  Europe,  we 
have  three  families  of  languages:  Turanian,  Semitic,  and 
Aryan.  In  each  of  these  (especially  the  first  two)  the 
growth  of  language  became  arrested,  i.  e.,  ceased  to  be 
natural,  and  through  religious  and  political  influences  be- 
came permanent  and  solidified.  With  this  petrifaction 
of  language  into  historical  speech  went  on  a  like  petri- 
faction of  religion  into  the  three  great  independent  settle- 
ments. The  character  of  the  latter  is  in  great  measure 
determined  by  that  of  the  former,  or  at  least  is  found  to  be 
of  similar  analogy. 

Of  Turanian  languages,  Chinese  is  the  oldest  repre- 
sentative. If  we  look  into  its  early  forms  we  get  light 
on  this  early  family  of  religions.  Accompanying  the  prosy 
speech  of  China  we  find  an  ancient  colorless  and  unpoetical 
religion,  one  which  might,  after  the  manner  of  the  lan- 
guage, also  be  called  monosyllabic.  Its  deities  are  a  host 
of  independent  spirits,  having  in  the  worshiper's  mind 
little  mutual  interrelationship.  They  are  evidently  per- 
sonifications of  the  heavens,  sun,  storms,  mountains,  rivers, 
etc.  Beside  these  stands  the  worship  of  ancestral  spirits 
and  those  of  the  more  recently  departed  who  are  believed  to 
be  lookers-on  of  human  affairs  and  to  be  exercising  their 
powers  for  good  or  evil.  This  old  form  of  faith,  a  double 
worship  of  human  and  natural  spirits,  lives  on  even  yet 
among  the  lower  ranks,  though  at  least  since  the  time  of 


THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS.  55: 

Confucius  it  has  been  superseded  in  the  upper  stratum  of 
intelligence. 

Among  Semitic  races  the  names  of  deities  clearly  mark 
off  their  religions  as  characteristic,  though  indeed  in  lan- 
guage, literature,  and  general  civilization  they  are  so  dif- 
ferent from  each  other  and  from  themselves  at  different 
times.  Yet  running  through  the  polytheisms  of  Babylon, 
Phoenicia,  and  Carthage,  as  well  as  the  monotheisms  of 
Jews,  Christians,  and  Mohammedans,  there  runs  the  same 
great  dominant  characteristic  notion  of  God  in  History, 
God  mingling  in  and  ruling  over  the  affairs  of  men  as 
individuals,  races,  and  nations,  as  contrasted  with  the 
characteristic  of  God  in  nature.  The  tendency  of  the 
peoples  has  been  to  lay  the  stress  of  life  on  social  organi- 
zation and  moral  relationships ;  hence  as  we  might  expect, 
Semitic  deities  in  general  bear  names  expressive  of  moral 
qualities :  the  Strong,  the  Exalted,  the  Lord,  the  King,  etc. 
Generally,  too,  the  anthropomorphism  is  not  strong  nor 
the  dramatic  activity  prominent.  Hence  their  tendency 
to  monotheism,  aided  by  the  external  circumstance  of  mo- 
notonous desert  life. 

And  thirdly  the  Aryans,  though  now  scattered  by  ex- 
tended enterprise  to  all  parts  of  the  globe,  are  a  family 
easily  recognized  by  the  roots  of  their  language.  Through 
the  names  of  their  gods  also  they  show  an  original  oneness 
of  religion.  Professor  Muller  denies  the  oft-repeated  re- 
mark that  their  worship  may  be  characterized  as  a  wor- 
ship of  nature,  and  says,  "if  it  had  to  be  characterized  by 
one  word,  I  should  venture  to  call  it  a  worship  of  God  in 
Nature,  of  God  as  appearing  behind  the  gorgeous  veil  of 
Nature,  rather  than  as  hidden  behind  the  veil  of  the  sanc- 
tuary of  the  human  heart.  The  gods  of  the  Aryans  assume 
an  individuality  so  strongly  marked  and  permanent,  that 
with  the  Aryans  a  transition  to  monotheism  required  a 


56  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

powerful  struggle,  and  seldom  took  effect  without  icono- 
clastic revolutions  or  philosophical  despair." 


Here  are  three  types  of  religion  accompanying  three 
types  of  language  and  race,  the  formation  and  settlement 
of  which  into  these  special  features  have  and  will  for  all 
future  time  determine  the  fate  of  the  whole  human  race. 
The  three  unities  which  at  some  remote  past  epoch  these 
peoples  formed,  have  in  course  of  time  through  increase 
of  numbers  and  other  circumstances  disintegrated  into 
what  might  seem  a  chaos  of  peoples,  tongues,  and  relig- 
ions. Yet  it  was  not  a  chaos,  for  out  of  this  seemingly 
inextricable  confusion  of  dialects  and  variety  of  races  our 
modern  science  has  been  able  to  assert  the  original  unity 
and  restore  the  principal  former  characteristics.  (As  yet 
the  case  with  regard  to  the  Turanians  is  somewhat  doubt- 
ful.) 

Professor  Muller  makes  reference  to  an  African  and  an 
American  family  of  races,  languages,  and  religions  which 
long  ago  broke  up  into  various  divisions  without  devel- 
oping literature  or  settled  speech,  and  hence  their  relation- 
ships-are a  vastly  more  difficult  study.  At  the  time  in  which 
he  was  speaking  there  was  little  to  be  gained  from  them 
in  the  way  of  support  for  his  general  view. 

*       *       * 

The  case  of  Aryan  unity  he  develops  at  some  length 
giving  substantially  the  same  reasons  that  I  have  done  in 
another  place  relying  principally  on  the  authority  of  Pictet. 
(See  "The  Primeval  Aryans,  etc.")  He  cites  the  names 
of  their  principal  deities,  calls  attention  to  their  terms 
expressive  of  the  most  essential  elements  of  religion,  as 
prayer,  sacrifice,  altar,  spirit,  law,  faith,  etc.  He  also 
mentions  such  cases  as  the  terms  for  house,  town,  king, 
etc. 


THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS.  57 

The  comparison  of  the  Semitic  family  of  languages  is 
carried  out  with  more  completeness.  Here  the  relation  is 
closer,  the  sub-races  have  never  been  so  scattered,  their 
intercourse  has  been  more  frequent,  and  hence  their  lin- 
guistic and  religious  relationships  are  more  manifest.  So 
manifest  indeed  is  the  former,  that  no  Semitic  scholar  has 
ever  thought  it  to  be  worth  his  while  to  carry  out  such  a 
comparative  study  of  their  likenesses  as  Pictet  and  others 
have  done  within  the  Aryan  family.  Nor  has  there  ever 
been  wrought  out  a  comparative  grammar  of  the  Semitic 
languages,  like  that  of  Bopp's,  e.  g.,  on  the  Aryan.  By 
the  same  process  of  comparison  which  has  been  so  success- 
fully carried  on  in  the  Aryan  group  could  we  here  still 
easier  reconstruct  the  primeval  Semitic  civilization  and 
religion.  (  A  noble  work  yet  to  be  executed  by  some  earnest 
progressive-minded  Semitic  scholar  who  might  tell  us  how 
this  race  lived  and  what  they  believed  and  thought  before 
Hebrew  was  Hebrew,  and  before  there  was  any  Syriac, 
Aramaic,  Arabic,  Ethiopic,  Phoenician,  or  Babylonian 
speeches.) 

The  evidence  of  the  pre-historic  oneness  of  the  Semites 
drawn  from  the  names  of  the  deities  is  unusually  strong. 
This  similarity  of  appellation  and  its  meaning  points  to 
the  fact  that  there  must  have  been  a  time  when  they  as 
well  as  the  Aryans  decided  as  one  people  upon  certain 
names  for  their  gods,  and  nothing  is  more  evident  than 
the  fact  that  this  period  preceded  the  special  development 
into  the  separate  languages  and  individual  religions.  The 
root  El  (meaning  Strong)  tells  a  great  history  with  regard 
to  this  race.  In  Babylonian  inscriptions  we  find  it  in  Ilu 
(God),  as  well  as  in  Bab-il  (the  gate  or  temple  of  II). 
Among  the  Hebrews  we  have  it  in  Beth-el  (house  of  God), 
and  in  ha-El,  preceded  by  the  article  (the  Strong,  the 
God,  i.  e.,  Jehovah).  The  Phoenicians  in  Byblus  (Jebel) 
worshiped  El,  the  son  of  Heaven  and  earth.    His  grand- 


58  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

father  Elium,  the  most  high  God,  was  killed  by  wild  ani- 
mals, and  his  father  dethroned,  and  finally  slain  by  him- 
self. Philo  identifies  this  god  El  with  the  Greek  Kronos, 
and  represents  him  as  the  presiding  deity  of  the  planet 
Saturn.  This  same  El  is  the  presiding  deity  of  this  planet 
according  to  Diodorus  Siculus.  And  the  Himyritic  in- 
scriptions in  Southern  Arabia  also  contain  it.  The  Hebrew 
Eloah  (plural  Elohini)  is  the  same  word  as  the  Arabic 
Ildh  (God),  which  without  the  article  means  god  in  gen- 
eral, and  with  the  article,  Al-ildh  or  Allah,  it  is  the  God 
of  the  Koran.  Again  it  appears  in  the  Arabic  in  the  fem- 
inine Alldt  to  whom  a  famous  temple  at  Taif  was  dedicated ; 
and  this  AUat  of  the  Koran  (whose  temple  was  destroyed 
by  Mohammed's  command)  is  doubtless  the  one  mentioned 
by  Herodotus  (iii,  8). 

The  word  Baal  or  Bel  is  another  name  of  deity  common 
to  most  of  the  Semitic  peoples.  Assyrians,  Babylonians, 
Phoenicians,  Carthaginians,  Moabites,  Philistines,  and 
Jews  all  worshiped  this  deity  as  a  great  or  as  the  supreme 
God.  This  points  to  their  earlier  unity  as  a  race  and  to 
his  greatness  as  a  god.  Later  through  local  worship  we 
hear  of  many  Baals  (Baalim  collectively  and  with  special 
names  singly):  Baal-tsur  (of  Tyre),  Baal-tsidon  (of  Si- 
don),  Baal-tars  (of  Tarsus),  Baal-berith  (of  Shechem, 
god  of  treaties,  Judg.  viii.  33;  ix.  4),  Baal-zehuh  (of  the 
Philistines  at  Ekron,  2  Kings  i.  2,  3,  16),  Baal-peor  (of 
the  Moabites  and  Jews,  Numb,  xxv),  and  Baal-Shdmayim 
(on  Phoenician  coins).  The  last  named  is  the  Beelsamen 
which  Philo  speaks  of  as  the  Phoenician  sun-god,  thus: 
"When  the  heat  became  oppressive  the  ancient  races  of 
Phoenicia  lifted  their  hands  heavenward  to  the  sun.  For 
him  they  considered  the  only  God,  the  lord  of  heaven,  cal- 
ling him  Beelsamen,  which  with  the  Phoenicians  is  lord 
of  heaven,  and  with  the  Greeks  Zeus." 

The  Ashtoreth  mentioned  in  the  Old  Testament  and 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  59^ 

worshiped  by  the  Jews  (i  Kings  xi.  5;  Judg.  iii.  12),  the 
Ishtar  of  the  Babylonians  mentioned  in  inscriptions  and  in 
the  famous  epic  (Geo.  Smith,  Chaldean  Account  of  Gen- 
esis), the  Ashtar  of  the  Moabite  stone,  and  the  Astarte 
of  the  Syrians,  are  one  and  the  same  goddess.  Traces  of 
this  goddess  and  her  consort  are  also  found  in  the  Himya- 
ritic  kingdom,  as  in  Athtar. 

The  Hebrew  Melech;  the  Moloch  of  Carthage,  Crete, 
Rhodes,  and  the  valley  of  Hinnom ;  the  Milcom  of  the  Am- 
monites (who  had  a  sanctuary  in  Mt.  Olivet)  ;  and  the 
Adrammelech  and  Anammelech  of  the  Sepharvites  (to 
whom,  according  to  2  Kings  xvii.  31,  they  burned  their 
children  in  sacrifice),  are  local  varieties  of  an  early  Sem- 
itic deity. 

The  Old  Testament  Adondi  (my  lord)  applied  only 
to  Jehovah,  was  in  Phoenicia  the  very  name  of  the  Supreme 
Deity.  This  personage,  as  is  well  known,  was  adopted 
into  the  Greek  mythology,  and  became  transformed  into 
the  beautiful  young  Adonis,  loved  by  Aphrodite,  and  killed 
by  the  wild  boar  of  Ares. 

Yet  other  names  are  mentioned  besides  these.  Alto- 
gether the  case  is  an  unusually  strong  one  from  this  class 
of  words  alone,  that  the  Semitic  religions  belonged  to- 
gether geneologically  as  a  class  on  the  same  basis  that 
their  language  in  other  ways  relate  them  as  peoples  of 
the  same  race.  The  period  when  they  were  one  people 
with  one  language  and  one  religion  far  antedates  historic 
times,  yet,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Aryans,  it  is  none  the  less 
certain;  and  should  the  work  be  undertaken  by  a  scholar 
competent  for  the  task,  I  doubt  not  that  a  much  better 
reconstruction  of  primeval  Semitic  civilization  and  religion 
might  be  effected  than  has  been  done  in  the  former  case. 

On  the  Turanian  ground  the  way  is  less  sure.  The 
subject  is  exceedingly  difficult,  because  it  has  been  com- 
paratively little  investigated.    The  languages  of  the  Chi- 


60  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

nese,  Mandshus,  Northern  Mongolian,  Tartars,  Finns,  etc. 
have  as  yet  been  very  little  a  subject  of  scientific  study. 
However,  with  such  evidence  as  may  be  obtained,  the  mat- 
ter of  proving  a  linguistic  relationship  as  a  basis  for  a 
relationship  of  religions  is  attempted.  Miiller's  method 
of  proof  is  faulty  here  in  that  he  calls  to  his  aid  the  simi- 
larity in  the  religions  which  he  would,  as  proposed  at  first, 
prove  by  linguistic  relations  alone.  Nevertheless  the  case 
is  not  so  badly  blemished  as  to  make  the  investigation 
worthless,  since  they  do  actually  assist  each  other  much. 
In  the  cases  of  the  Aryans  and  Semites  we  knew  more  of 
their  languages  at  start  than  we  did  of  their  religions, 
and  hence  our  knowledge  of  the  former  very  naturally 
proved  a  great  help  toward  a  better  understanding  of  the 
latter  besides  showing  their  geneological  connections.  But 
with  the  Turanians,  we  are  better  acquainted  at  the  outset 
with  their  religious  notions  than  with  the  family  relation- 
ship of  their  tongues.  Hence  very  naturally  the  racial 
unity  which  the  similarity  of  their  religions  points  to  is 
aided  but  not  absolutely  proved  by  the  investigation  of  the 
leading  religious  terms.  In  the  background  of  all  Tura- 
nian religions  are  certain  fundamental  ideas  which  have 
a  closer  resemblance  even  at  first  glance  than  any  of  these 
have  with  other  faiths.  With  all  of  them  there  goes  a 
nature  worship  of  a  sort  peculiar  to  the  group.  A  few 
comparisons  and  terms  will  show  what  basis  there  is  for 
the  attempt. 

In  the  Shu-king  (one  of  the  most  ancient  sacred  books 
of  China)  heaven  and  earth  are  the  father  and  mother  of 
all  things.  In  the  ancient  poetry.  Heaven  alone  is  both 
father  and  mother.  The  heaven-spirit  is  called  Tien,  and 
is  ever  used  as  the  name  of  the  supreme  deity,  i.  e.,  he  is 
the  Chinese  Jupiter  or  Allah.  The  word  means  the  Great 
One,  and  in  Chinese  characters  is  compounded  of  two 
signs:   iz  (ta)   meaning  "great"  and  —   (yih)   meaning 


THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS.  6l' 

"one,"  Ji  (ta-yih  or  Tien),  The  Peerless,  the  Great,  the 
High,  the  Exalted,  the  One,  stands  above  all  else.  It  is 
personified  as  the  ancestor  of  all  things,  as  the  framer,  as 
having  decrees  and  will,  as  sending  sages  to  teach  the 
people,  as  knowing  men's  hearts,  and  as  comforting  them. 
This  was  the  solace  of  Confucius  when  he  desponded  be- 
cause men  would  not  hear  him:  "Heaven  knows  me." 
With  the  other  multitude  of  nature  spirits  believed  in  by 
the  common  people,  the  sages  had  little  to  do.  "Respect 
the  gods,  and  keep  them  at  a  distance,"  was  a  remark  of 
Confucius  when  pressed  by  his  disciples  regarding  the 
bearing  of  a  wise  man  toward  them.  These  gods  were 
spirits  of  the  sun,  moon,  stars,  earth,  mountains,  rivers, 
and  ancestors  of  the  people. 

Putting  beside  these  facts  the  less  complete  and  prob- 
ably less  trustworthy  accounts  of  travelers  from  Central 
and  Northern  Asia,  we  recognize  some  striking  coinci- 
dences. "Everywhere  we  find  a  worship  of  the  spirits  of 
nature,  of  the  spirits  of  the  departed,  though  behind  and 
above  it  there  rises  the  belief  in  some  higher  power,  known 
by  different  names,  sometimes  called  the  Father,  the  Old 
One,  who  is  the  Maker  and  Protector  of  the  world,  and 
who  always  resides  in  heaven."  From  Chinese  historians 
we  learn  that  the  Huns  worshiped  the  sun,  moon,  spirits 
of  the  sky  and  earth,  and  spirits  of  the  departed.  Menander, 
a  Byzantine  writer,  relates  of  the  Turks  in  his  time,  that 
they  worshiped  fire,  water,  earth,  and  believed  in  and 
sacrificed  to  a  god  whom  they  regarded  as  the  maker  of 
the  world.  Castren,  the  chief  modern  authority  on  the 
religion  of  these  Northern  Mongolians  (See  his  Vor- 
lesungen  iiber  Unnische  Mythologie),  says  of  the  Tungusic 
tribes:  "They  worship  the  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars,  the 
earth,  fire,  the  spirits  of  forests,  rivers,  and  certain  sacred 
localities ;  they  worship  even  images  and  fetishes,  but  with 
all  this  they  retain  a  faith  in  a  supreme  being  which  they 


62  THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS. 

call  Buga''  "  The  Samoyedes,"  he  says,  "worship  idols 
and  various  natural  objects;  but  they  always  profess  a 
belief  in  a  higher  divine  power  which  they  call  Num.''  This 
deity  they  also  call  Junta,  which  is  the  same  as  the  Jumala 
of  Finland.  Jumala,  from  Juma,  thunder,  and  la,  the 
place,  meant  originally  the  sky.  Later  it  signified  the  god 
of  the  sky,  and  finally  came  to  designate  gods  in  general. 
Among  Lapps,  Esthonians,  Syrjanes,  Tcheremissians,  and 
Votyakes  the  same  word  is  found  with  slight  dialectic  vari- 
ations having  the  like  chief  signification.  Castren  tells  a 
good  story  to  illustrate  Samoyede  sun  worship,  or  heaven 
worship  where  the  sun  is  thought  of  as  the  heaven  god. 
He  asked  an  old  woman  whether  she  ever  said  her  prayers. 
She  replied :  "Every  morning  I  step  out  of  my  tent  and  bow 
before  the  sun,  and  say,  'When  thou  risest,  I,  too,  rise  from 
my  bed.'  And  every  evening  I  say,  When  thou  sinkest 
down,  I,  too,  sink  down  to  rest.'  "  And  she  added  with 
a  touch  of  self-righteousness :  "There  are  wild  people  who 
never  say  their  morning  and  evening  prayers." 

So  much  for  the  general  similarity  of  religions;  but 
are  there  no  linguistic  connections?  We  saw  that  the 
Chinese  Tien  meant  sky,  god  of  the  sky,  and  god  in  gen- 
eral, being  in  meaning  the  exact  counterpart  of  the  North- 
Turanian  Jumala,  In  Mongolian  speech  we  find  Teng-ri 
with  the  same  three  meanings,  with  the  later  signification  of 
spirit  or  demon,  good  or  bad.  In  Turkish  we  have  Tangry 
or  Tenri,  and  in  Yakute  Tangara.  Earlier  Chinese  authors 
tell  us  that  the  Huns  gave  to  their  leaders  the  title  Tangli- 
Kutu  (or  in  Chinese  Tchen-jii),  which  meant  in  Hunnish 
speech  Son  of  Heaven.  Now  this  title  Son  of  Heaven, 
Tien-tze,  is  also  the  Chinese  designation  of  their  emperor. 
Again,  the  Chinese  historians  say  that  the  Tukiu,  the  an- 
cestors of  the  Turks,  worshiped  the  spirits  of  the  earth, 
calling  them  the  Pu-teng-i-lL    If,  as  is  probable,  pu  means 


THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS.  63 

earth,  we  have  in  teng-i-li  the  MongoHan  teng-ri,  used  in 
that  early  thne  as  the  general  name  of  gods  and  spirits. 

In  this  series  then  we  have  a  piece  of  linguistic  evidence 
of  considerable  value.  We  perceive  for  those  of  the  family 
in  closest  connection  a  name  derived  from  a  common  root 
given  to  the  highest  deity,  and  afterwards  passing  through 
like  organic  changes  in  the  process  of  development.  "Every- 
where they  begin  with  the  meaning  of  sky,  they  rise  to 
the  meaning  of  God,  and  they  sink  down  again  to  the 
meaning  of  gods  and  spirits."  These  changes  of  mean- 
ing in  the  words  run  parallel  with  the  changes  which  took 
place  in  the  religions  of  these  peoples. 

We  have  now  seen  the  basis  on  which  Professor  Miiller 
would  set  up  a  science  of  religion.  The  linguistic  evidence 
for  a  classification  of  the  religions  of  peoples  dwelling  in 
Africa,  America,  and  Polynesia  is  not  taken  up  in  this 
work.  The  three  groups  most  conspicuous  in  history  are 
examined  and  the  case  is  thought  strong  enough  to  draw 
the  induction,  that  in  linguistic  relationships  we  have  the 
ground  for  the  most  useful  divisions  within  the  field  of  re- 
ligion. Leaving  aside  the  incompleteness  of  the  examination 
both  as  to  the  number  of  groups  left  out  and  the  unsatisfac- 
toriness  of  the  result,  especially  in  the  case  of  the  Turanians, 
the  questions  should  be  raised :  Most  useful  for  what  pur- 
pose? and  why  exclude  other  classifications  for  other  pur- 
poses ?  As  I  have  again  and  again  remarked,  each  division 
which  proceeds  to  look  at  the  subject  from  a  new  point  of 
view  adds  its  contribution  toward  a  complete  understand- 
ing, and  consequently  is  just  as  legitimate  and  indispen- 
sible  as  any  other.  Whoever  then  in  an  attempt  to  be 
scientific  makes  a  new  ground  of  division  should  endeavor 
not  to  commit  that  grossest  of  unscientific  deeds,  viz., 
the  exclusion  of  facts  within  his  field,  even  though  those 
facts  come  in  the  form  of  classifications  which  he  did  not 
originate  and  over  which  he  consequently  does  not  glow 


64  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

SO  earnestly.  It  has  not  been  established  by  anything  Pro- 
fessor Miiller  has  brought  forward,  nor  do  I  know  of  any 
reason  why  it  should  be  assumed,  that  "scientific"  and 
"genetic"  cover  each  other,  as  he  seems  to  assume  at  the 
outset.  Like  all  the  views  before  studied,  this  has  its  pe- 
culiar place.  This  sort  of  starting-point  for  the  study  of 
Religions  puts  us  on  track  of  racial  and  historic  connections 
and  relationships  between  them.  It  affords  help  toward 
answering  one  of  the  greatest  demands  of  our  times,  viz., 
the  question  as  to  the  origin  and  development  of  things, 
i.  e.,  the  "genesis"  question.  In  this  respect  it  is  indeed 
a  welcome  suggestion.  Yet  we  must  not  be  so  blind  in  our 
enthusiasm  as  to  suppose  the  questions  over  which  we  and 
our  age  are  chiefly  interested  constitutes  the  scope  of  "sci- 
entific" investigation.  Through  language  it  is  possible  to 
study  mythologies  and  religions  as  in  no  other  way.  Their 
organic  relationship  can  be  shown  of ttimes  beyond  a  doubt, 
and  then  by  the  aid  of  history  their  relative  claims  of  orig- 
inality and  independence  can  be  reasonably  settled.  In  this 
way  unjustifiable  assumptions  may  be  set  aside  and  credit 
be  placed  where  it  belongs.  It  consequently  incites  to 
progress  by  driving  us  beyond  these  old  assumptions,  since 
it  shows  us  their  origin,  their  relation  to  other  similar 
ones,  their  process  of  development,  and,  if  we  will,  will  help 
to  point  out  a  higher  standing-ground  for  the  future. 
Whatever  can  assist  toward  such  desiderata  has  need  of 
no  other  excuse  for  its  presence. 

//.  According  to  Ethnological  Relationships  and  Histor- 
ical Connections, 

A  NEW  CLASSIFICATION. 

The  reason  for  an  ethnological  classification  of  religions 
is  the  fact  that  religion  gets  its  character  from  the  people 
or  race  who  develop  it  or  who  adopt  it,  and  that  the  re- 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  65 

Hgions  of  related  peoples  are  more  nearly  alike  in  char- 
acter. I  have  already  quoted  Max  Miiller's  remark  that 
"particularly  in  the  early  history  of  the  human  intellect, 
there  exists  the  most  intimate  relationship  between  lan- 
guage, religion  and  nationality.'*  As  history  advances 
the  lines  do  not  run  quite  so  closely  parallel.  Each  and 
all  become  intermixed  and  influenced  from  without;  yet 
the  cast  imparted  to  it  and  the  type  which  its  exponents 
give  it  are  ever  manifest.  (Compare,  e.  g.,  English,  Span- 
ish, and  Russian  Christianity.)  However,  notwithstand- 
ing all  the  deviations  or  separations  between  race  and  re- 
ligion, there  yet  remains  a  striking  unanimity.  This  is 
presented  to  us  at  a  glance  when  we  take  the  trouble  to 
compare  an  ethnographic  and  a  religious  map  of  the  world. 
We  have  in  our  time,  however,  to  compare  groups  or  fami- 
lies of  each  instead  of  individuals  or  single  members  as 
would  be  the  case  in  a  study  of  the  conditions  in  ancient 
times. 

Within  the  last  few  years  we  have  heard  much  about 
universal  religions  as  contrasted  with  national  or  race 
religions;  but  how  strictly  in  the  mass  of  the  populations 
the  racial  lines  are  maintained  and  how  thoroughly  they 
modify  any  importations  of  foreign  faiths  brought  about 
by  military  might  or  political  influence,  is  most  manifest 
as  soon  as  our  attention  is  given  to  the  situation.  To  take 
an  illustration  or  two  from  the  best  known  cases:  the 
Christianity  of  the  Romish  type,  although  preached  with 
an  unrivalled  pertinacity,  has  signally  failed  to  take  a 
deep  hold  upon  the  Teutonic,  or  Germanic,  races.  It  has 
been  able  to  take  root  only  where  the  Roman  civilization 
had  been  or  was  at  the  same  time  planted.  The  indepen- 
dent spirit  of  Northern  Europe  was  never  subjected  to  the 
Roman  yoke,  and  as  soon  as  it  reached  a  sufficient  degree 
of  culture,  it  produced  its  Wiclifs,  Husses,  and  Luthers 
who,  with  the  material  then  at  hand,  developed  a  distinct 


66  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

racial  religious  tendency.  And  the  tenacity  with  which 
these  lines  yet  hold  is  too  well  known  to  need  a  word  of 
comment  or  support.  Just  as  Romanism  has  found  it  im- 
possible to  penetrate  northward,  so  Protestantism  has  made 
little  impression  on  Southern  Europe.  Wherever  Romance 
peoples  are  (in  Italy,  France,  Spain,  Portugal,  Mexico, 
and  South  America),  there  is  Roman  Christianity  in  the 
ascendency;  wherever  Teutonic,  or  Germanic,  peoples  are 
(in  Germany — excepting  the  southern  part  where  the  pop- 
ulation is  less  purely  German,  and  where  it  was  more  sub- 
jected to  Roman  civilization — Scandinavia,  Great  Britain, 
Iceland,  United  States,  British  America,  and  Australia) 
there  is  Protestantism. 

Now  the  same  influences,  forces,  and  isolated  circum- 
stances which  developed  a  special  race  developed  at  the 
same  time  a  special  religion,  which  is  a  necessary  con- 
stituent element  or  part  of  a  race  (at  least  after  man  had 
reached  a  certain  stage  of  mental  power  or  growth).  Or, 
as  above  explained,  if  the  religion  be  one  imposed  upon  the 
race  from  without,  it  is  destined  to  be  made  over  and  modi- 
fied to  correspond  with  the  peculiar  character,  notions,  and 
circumstances  of  the  people  who  come  to  adopt  it.  Only 
an  occasional  thinker  rises  above  the  peculiarity  which 
makes  his  people  a  distinct  one  and  advocates  more  uni- 
versal tendencies;  and  since  the  influence  of  these  rare- 
coming  individuals  must  be  for  various  reasons  exceed- 
ingly limited  (especially  because  the  broader  views  which 
they  preach,  in  negating  so  much  of  the  old  peculiarities, 
seem  to  the  masses  irreligious),  the  stamp  given  to  a  re- 
ligion must  ever  come  in  greater  part  from  the  side  of  the 
mediocrity  of  the  population.  Only  at  rare  intervals  in 
history  does  there  come  a  juncture  of  conditions  when 
individual  influence  can  rise  so  high  as  to  overturn  the 
popular  views;  and  then  we  have  the  beginning  of  what 
later  is  called  a  new  religion.     The  new  views  are  grad- 


THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS.  67 

ually  taken  up  by  the  masses  and  gradually  but  certainly 
wrought  over,  interpreted  and  developed  to  correspond 
to  the  tendencies  and  environments  of  the  race  in  ques- 
tion. Now  it  should  be  evident  that  a  religion  is  not  suf- 
ficiently understood  (whatever  else  we  may  know  about 
it)  until  it  is  seen  in  reference  to  these  racial  peculiarities 
and  circumstances  of  life.  And  if  religion  cannot  be  stud- 
ied in  its  fulness  and  fairness  without  going  into  its  eth- 
nical manifestations,  not  more  can  we  expect  without  such 
a  treatment  to  obtain  a  due  appreciation  for  this  great 
historic  factor.  An  ethnological  study  of  the  field  will  have 
the  advantage  of  showing  what  has  been  contributed  by 
the  various  races  to  the  full  idea  or  concept  of  religion. 
It  will  show  us  that  its  essence  has  been  conceived  to  con- 
sist in  now  one  and  now  another  element,  and  through 
this  will  teach  the  elements  which  properly  belong  within 
its  domain.  In  this  way,  its  investigation  will  do  away 
with  a  multitude  of  misconceptions  and  onesided  ideas. 
Believing  then,  as  I  do,  that  new  light  may  be  thrown 
upon  religious  phenomena  by  undertaking  its  examination 
in  such  a  manner  as  above  suggested,  and  believing,  as  I 
have  said  elsewhere,  that  such  a  study  is  demanded  by 
the  broad  candid  requirements  of  our  genuine  modern 
science ;  I  ofifer  the  accompanying  ethnographical  divisions 
and  outline  tables  as  a  guide  for  such  an  examination. 
Although  we  are  far  from  possessing  the  material  for  a 
complete  understanding  of  all  these  peoples,  yet  more  is  at 
hand  than  most  of  us  are  aware  of,  more  perhaps  than  we 
yet  have  capacity  to  use,  and  more,  it  is  to  be  feared,  than 
we  yet  have  disposition  to  use  with  fairness  and  impar- 
tiality toward  those  belonging  to  other  stems  of  the  race. 
In  support  of  this  remark  about  the  material  which  stands 
ready  for  scientific  disposal,  as  well  as  for  the  general  cor- 
respondence of  the  arrangements  here  adopted  with  the 
facts,  I  beg  leave  to  call  attention  to  the  works  of  Tylor, 


68 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 


Spencer,  Fr.  Miiller,  Peschel,  Ratzel,  Hartmann,  and 
Waitz,  and  to  the  multitude  of  works  referred  to  by  these 
well-known  writers. 

A  TENTATIVE  ETHNOGRAPHICO-HISTORICAL  CLASSIFICATION 

OF  THE  HUMAN  RACES  TO  FACILITATE  THE  STUDY 

OF   RELIGIONS.— IN   FIVE   DIVISIONS. 


TABLE 

I. 

Malayans 

Sumatra 
Java 
Borneo 
Madagascar 

'  Formosa 

East  Malayans  - 

Phillipine 
Celebes 
^  Molucca 

X 

Micronesians    - 

r  Pelew 
Caroline 
Marshall 

^  Gilbert 

o  - 
is 

Melanesians 

'  Solomon 
Fiji 

New  Caledonia 
New  Hebrides 
New  Guinea 

^  Tasmania 

Polynesians 
Australians 

r  Tonga 

Samoa 

Society 

Marquaesas 

Paumotu 
^  Hawai 

.   Maori  (New  Zeal 

anders). 

as 

<     M 
5     OS 


TABLE  II. 

See  V'dlker-Karte  in  Ratzel's  V5lkerkunde,  Bd.  I,  20. 
Negroes:  Peoples  of  the  Soudan  region  etc, 
Bantus:  Kafir  and  Kongo  Peoples  of  Central  Africa. 
Quoi-Quoin:  Hottentots  and  Bushmen. 

For  North  Africans,  see  Table  V. 


THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 


69 


TABLE  III. 

1.  Eskimo.    (The  connecting  link  with  Mongolian.) 

2.  North  American  Indians.   (Including  many  tribes  from  British  America  to 

theGulf  of  Mexico.) 

3.  Nahuas.    (Including  the  Aztecs,  Toltecs.  and  Nahuas  extending  from  Van- 

couver's Island  to  Nicaragua.) 

4.  Antilleans.    (Including  the  Mayas  in  Yucatan  and  the  Natchez  between  the 

Red  and  Mississippi  Rivers.     Were  one  of  the  most  gifted  of  American 
peoples.    Subjected  by  the  Caribs.) 

5.  Muyscas  or  Chidchas.    (In  South  America.) 

6.  Quichua,  Aymara,  etc.    (Culminating  in  the  sun  worship  of  the  Incas  of 

Peru.    A  natural  growth  to  a  very  high  stage.) 

7.  Caribs  and  Arowaks.    (Along  the  whole  north  coast  of  South  America.) 

Brazillian f  Tupi-guaranos 


8.  South  American  Indians 


Southern  and  South-east 
Tribes 


Indies  Mansos 
Abipones 
Pampas  Indians 
Puelches 
Pategonians  (or 
Tehuelches). 
'"  Fuegians. 


TABLE  IV. 

Mongol-Tartars  of  Northern  and  North-Eastern  Asia. 

'  Lapps 
Estbonians 
Finns 
Magyar 
Turkish 
^  Tibetan 
Burmese   1 
Siamese 


Ural-Altaic 

(original  unity  of  this  branch  has  been 
proved  by  Castrettj  the  highest  au- 
thority on  it.) 


Indo-Chinese 


{ 


Confucianism   <r 

Taoism 

Chinese  Buddhism 


Japanese  -^ 

(Old  national  religion  Kami-no-madati  I 
or  Sin-to.)  ^  ^..:eJ.:«w 


Chinese  t 
(ancient 
national^"" 
religion) 

r  Confucianism 

J       (Introd.  from  China  in  7th  cent.) 
Buddhism 
^•v.      (Introd.  from  Corea  about  552) 


TABLE  V. 
Babylonian — Assyrian 
Aramaean  (Syrian) 
Phoenician — Carthagenian 

{Moabitic  and  Ammonitic      .2  - 
Mosaism  and  f  Kingdoms!  «  H  f  Judaism  (or  Prophetism  1   f  Modern  Judaism 
Pre-Mosaic -j    of  Israel    ?■  o.«2  i    modified  by  Medo-Per-    M  [Oriental 

LandJudahJ  g^  [.  sian  and  Babylonian)     J   (. Christianity-!  Romish 


(.Protestant 


o  S 


Egyptian  (Ancient)  (  ?) 

rSabaean  (Himyaritic) 
Pre-historic  Arabic ■<  North  Arabic — Hanfis — Mohammedanism 

1.     (depending  largely  on  Judaism  and  Christianity) 
Hamites  (Ethiopian^)  {Berbj;^^ 

fNyaya 
c  1  Vaiseshika 
§•  4J  J  Sankhya 


S^JYoga 


Mimansa 
LVedanta 


'  3  f  Vishnuism ' 
I  c  X  Sivaism 


(To  a  consid- 
erable extent 
superseded  by 
Mohammedan- 
ism) 


Recent  r  Sikhs 
•  move--?  Rammohun  Roy 
meats  1  Keshab  Cander  Sen 


ffiuddhism  { Si"ifSl  ExfeS*of  . 
iMahayana;r5„HHM=rr,1 


I 


Jainism. . 


f  Cvetambara 
1  Digambara 


Buddhism 


Northern  - 


Southern 


U  <4 


-1 


■^< 

i^'. 


HO 

^  *^  rt  D  rtX!  S-JS  O*'  c3  o*^ 


-^6  5 


r« 

c» 

u 

•a 

c 

rt 
u 
rt 

N 

rt 

;^ 

U5 

"O**- 

o 

•H 

"5 

rt 

i 

"rt 
> 

rt 

rt 

>  >»  1 

l,C/i 

Vi 

o 


"O-ja  r  Median  Magism 
^  S3  -^  Old  Persian  of 
■^  Ph  [.  the  Achaemenides 
Phrygian 

Of  Asia  Minor  ]  fHomeric 

and  Crete         [Hellenic  (containing  elements  J  Hesiodic 
Of  Achaia  (    from  Phrygia  and  Phoenicia)  |  Delphic 

Of  Pelasgia        J  LAthenian 


'Modern  Parseeism  (in  Kirman  and  Bombay  regions") 

Manichaeism  (composed  of  Persian,  Christian,  and 
Buddhistic  elements) 

Ossets  ] 

Georgians     I 

Armenians  V  Now  Mohammedans 

Kurds 
.Afghans      J 


Philosophers   f^^leS 
(Thales  to  Neo-  ^  ,k>ffiff. 
Platonism) 


]  (Oriental 
(.  Christian) 


c  r  Latin       ^  f  Italians 

.2  J  Sabine      J-     Old  f  Roman  reformed  by  f  Grecianized  \  Romance  J  Spaniards 

rt  1  EtruscanJ    Roman  1     the  Tarquinii  ( ?)    (      Roman      J    Peoples  )  Portuguese 
^  LSamnitic  L  French 

;Gallo-Cymric  j^Armoric 
i  Welsh 
Manx 

Lettic 

iOld  Russian  [Svarog,  Dajbog.  OgonuJ 
Wendic 
Polish  and  Czechish  (Bohemian) 
Servian,  Bulgarian,  Hungarian 


High  German  [Tio,  Wuotan,  etc.]  )■  ■{  Suavish 

f  Coast  German  [Woden,  Goden]  f  N.W.  German 
Low  German  \  Frisian  [Woda]  (  Dutch 

LSaxon  [Wodan]  M  English 

["Danish 
Aesir  [Odhin,  Thor]  I  Swedish 

Vanir  [Njordh,  Frey,  Freya]    j  Norwegian 

[Icelandic 


*  This  title  was  given  by  Oscar  Peschel.  It  is  not  very  fitting,  but  answers  as  well  as 
any  other  proposed.  Gerland  uses  "Indo-European."  Blumenbach  called  these  peoples 
"Caucasian." 

t  On  the  subdivisions  of  this  family  see  the  discussion  of  "The  Primeval  Aryans." 


s 

o 

-0 

rj 

c 
a  J 

6 

o 

CO 

V 

Oi 

^ 

o 

S 

^ 

■n 

/o 

<6 

THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS.  /J; 


FINALE.      * 

We  have  now  had  a  glance  at  the  chief  methods  of 
classifying  religious  phenomena.  We  perceive  moreover 
the  various  starting-points  and  principles  from  which  the 
divisions  are  made.  It  is  to  be  hoped  also  that  their  ad- 
vantages and  limitations  have  been  suggested,  if  not  fully 
set  forth.  It  shall  not  be  my  calling  hereafter  to  ignore 
these  various  methods,  but  on  the  contrary  to  often  refer 
to  some  of  them  with  pleasure.  They  are  neither  to  be  un- 
qualifiedly adopted  nor  narrowly  excluded.  They  serve 
their  respective  purposes ;  but  because  of  these  virtues,  we 
are  not  justified  in  resting  content  as  soon  as  our  desires 
for  clearness  are  in  part  satisfied.  It  must  be  carefully 
borne  in  mind  that  this  subject  has  never  had.  a  universal 
and  impartial  investigation  such  as  has  been  given  to 
many  other  fields ;  hence  the  best  theories  about  it  are  but 
inductions  made  on  imperfect  bases.  We  may  trust  that 
here,  as  everywhere  else,  nature  is  greater  than  our  great- 
est guesses,  and  for  this  reason  we  may  not  hasten  to  tie 
ourselves  up  for  fear  of  getting  too  far,  especially  if  we 
divest  our  minds  of  every  interest  but  that  of  desire  to 
get  at  the  largest  truth.  But  how  is  this  largest  truth 
to  be  attained?  Surely  not  without  seeing  the  greatest 
possible  number  of  the  facts.  And  not  less  surely  ought 
those  facts  to  be  studied  with  as  little  perconceived  theory 
as  may  be.  Our  better  sciences  proceed  by  gathering  the 
facts  in  an  orderly  manner,  and  then  looking  to  see  what 
laws  and  principles  they  point  toward.  It  is  the  business 
of  history  and  ethnology  to  furnish  this  material;  it  be- 
longs to  philosophy  to  draw  the  inductions.  It  strikes  me 
then  that  religion  (and  not  more  this  than  any  other  human 
expression)  does  not  receive  full  scientific  justice  until  it 
has  been  investigated,  historically,  ethnologically,  and  phil- 
osophically ;  in  other  words,  in  terms  of  time,  space  and  in- 


7^  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIONS. 

most  essence.  Inasmuch  as  there  is  virtually  no  history 
obtainable  (in  the  continuous  chronological  and  develop- 
mental sense)  for  most  of  the  peoples  of  the  world,  the 
historical  and  ethnical  study  must  go  for  the  most  part 
hand  in  hand. 

The  first  requisite  for  such  an  undertaking  is  to  obtain 
through  ethnological  science  a  general  notion  of  the  races 
of  men  and  of  the  various  leading  branches  of  these,  past 
and  present.  This  has  been  attempted  in  the  five  preceding 
tables,  and  the  reasons  for  it  have  been  given  in  former 
pages  of  this  treatise  and  in  the  one  on  "Introduction  to 
a  Historico-Ethnical  Study  of  Religions.''  Those  leading 
races  now  form  so  many  leading  points  of  inquiry  under 
each  of  which  many  questions  are  to  be  asked;  and  first 
from  the  multitude  of  answers  returned  may  be  undertaken 
the  building  up  of  the  body  or  superstructure  of  what  we 
may  fitly  term  a  genuine  science  of  religion. 


OUTLINE  OF  INQUIRIES  FOR  A  HISTORICO-ETHNICAL 
STUDY  OF  RELIGIONS. 

I.  Preliminary  Questions  (briefly) : 

1.  The  Racial  Relations  of  the  Special  People. 

2.  Their  Relative  Position  in  History,  and  the  Principal  Great  Events 

in  Their  Career. 

3.  Their  Residence  and  Phj^sical  Surroundings : 

Climate — cold,  hot,  moderate  and  stimulating. 
Land  surface — mountains,  level,  plateau,  desert. 
Water — rivers,  lakes,  seas,  archipelago. 
Flora,  fauna,  minerals. 

Striking  natural  phenomena — storms,  hurricanes,  volcanoes, 
earthquakes. 

4.  Their  Stage  of  Development  in  general : 

Material— How  do  they  live?  (i)  By  hunting  and  fishing,  (2) 
by  herding  and  pasturing,  (3)  by  simple  agriculture,  (4)  by 
scientific  agriculture,  manufacture,  and  trade. — Tools,  weap- 
ons, shelter. 

Intellectual — language,  literature,  art. 

Social — family,  government. 

Moral — virtues,  vices  in  their  own  regard,  relations  to  surround- 
ing nations. 

II.  Source  of  Their  Religion  : 

1.  Founder  or  Founders — chief  circumstances  of  their  lives. 

2.  Relative  Originality  and  Chief  Sources  of  Influence. 

3.  Sacred  Literature — divisions,  general  character,  theoretic  origin,  ac- 

tual origin. 

III.  Their  Conception  of  the  Universe: 

1.  Its  Form  or  Shape. 

2.  Its  Nature  or  Substances. 

3.  Its  Origin  or  Creation. 

4.  Their  Theory  of  the  Source  of  Evil 

IV.  Their  Conceptions  of  Supernatural  Beings — Their  Theism  : 


74  THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS. 

1.  Names,  Nature  and  Functions  of  the  Gods.    Are  they : 

Simple  tangible  or  visible  objects, — stones,  bones,  shells,  herbs, 
bits  of  wood,  feathers,  weapons,  rocks,  water,  skins,  animals, 
particular  places — i.  e.,  to  what  extent  is  fetichism  prevalent? 

Semi-tangible  or  semi-visible  objects — mountains,  rivers,  earth, 
fire,  wind,  rain,  lightning — i.  e.,  to  what  extent  does  a  lower 
nature  worship  prevail? 

Intangible  or  invisible  objects — sky,  sun,  moon,  stars,  dawn, 
spirits  of  ancestors  and  of  great  men,  spirits  in  and  independent 
of  objects,  personified  abstract  conceptions  as  virtues,  fates,  etc. 

Whether  the  polytheism  is  of  a  miscellaneous,  democratic,  mon- 
archical, or  henotheistic  conception? 

Whether  a  monotheistic  conception  is  attained  by  individuals  or 
by  the  people  at  any  time  in  their  career? 

Whether  they  developed  a  philosophy,  and  if  so,  what  it  attained 
to — dualism,  spiritual  monism,  or  materialistic  monism? 

2.  Character   of   the   Gods — power,   wisdom,   beneficence,   malevolence. 

(Only  dualistic  religions  divide  their  deities  into  divine  and  de- 
moniacal and  their  future  state  into  heaven  and  hell.) 

V.  Their  Conception  of  Man's  Nature; 

1.  His  Origin, 

2.  His  Relation  to  Supernatural  Beings. 

3.  The  Character  of  the  Idea  of  Salvation  (if  any)  i.  e.,  from  what  to 

what?  Is  it  only  sensuously  thought,  or  does  it  refer  to  some  con- 
dition or  state  of  mind  to  be  avoided  and  some  spiritual  accom- 
plishment to  be  aimed  at,  and  if  the  latter,  what  is  the  chief  feature 
of  the  resulting  mental  development — intellectual,  moral,  sym- 
pathetic, esthetic,  etc.? 

4.  Their  Notion  of  a  Future  Life — death,  resurrection,  region  of  the 

dead  (immediately  after  death  and  their  permanent  abode,  whether 
(a)  in  solitary  gorges  and  valleys,  or  on  hill  tops,  where  the  living 
rarely  go;  (b)  on  distant  islands  toward  the  setting  sun;  (c)  in 
an  under  and  shadowy  realm  below  our  world;  (d)  among  the 
stars  or  beyond  them  in  a  heavenly  kingdom  for  good  and  a  lower 
place  of  punishment  or  torment  for  the  wicked;  (e)  a  spiritual 
state  out  of  spacial  relations). 

VI.  What   Suggestion    Does    Their   Environment   Offer   Toward   Ex- 
plaining Their  Theism  and  Eschatology? 

VII.  CuLTUs: 

1.  Creeds — character,  and  relation  to  the  authority  on  which  they  assume 

to  be  based,  how  regarded? 

2.  Ceremonies — ^prayers,  offerings,  sacrifices,  assemblies,  songs,  dances, 

incantations,  feasts,  fasts. 

3.  Ordinances  having  regard  specially  to  individual  life — birth,  circum- 

cision, confirmation,  baptism,  marriage,  anointing  of  sick,  burial, 
commemoration,  canonization,  excommunication. 


THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF  RELIGIONS.  75 

4.  Organizations, 

Institutions,  sects. 

Priesthood — its  orders,  ordination,  duties,  standing,  vestments. 
Shamans — sorcerers,  magicians,  medicine  men,  miracle  workers, 
prophets. 

5.  Places  of  Worship — temple,  altar,  sacred  groves,  hills,  valleys ;  sacred 

utensils. 

6.  Symbolism — geometric  forms,  monograms,  paintings,  figures. 

VIII.  Moral  Teachings,  or  Relation  of  the  Religion  to  Practical  Life — vir- 
tues, vices. 

IX.  Progressive  or  Dogmatic  in  Tendency  : 

1.  Direction  and  Strength  of  this. 

2.  Heresies — their  nature,  i.  e.,  whether  party  reactions  or  growths  of 

thought,  their  treatment  by  the  dominant  faith. 

X.  The  Central  Idea  of  the  Religion  : 

1.  In  Theory. 

2.  Its  Greatest  Emphasis  in  its  Practical  Carrying-out. 

3.  Other  Essential  Ideas. 

XI.  Its    Peculiar   Contribution   Toward   Showing  the   Scope  or   Full 
Content  of  Religious  Life. 


^-3  »»-5r/r» "-"""'" 

"^;r^nF     25     CENTS 

AN  INITIAL  P»^,^^  pI^luRE  TO  RETURN 
^  Ltr    ASSESSED    FOR   FAiv-  pENAUTY 

;:'rs  s'oof  ON  THE  0--/J^/on\hE  FOURTH 
;",'ul  .NCHEASE  TO  |0  "-^^^^    SEVENTH    O.V 

DAY    AND    TO    9^°°  ^^^^^^^__^^_ 

OVERDUE. 


SEP  30    1932 


APR   1^  1»*« 


20Nla/53Rf 
JUN    21953L0 


FE9   27  t945 
SEP  25    1045 


^Y  1  3 1984 


MAR    6     i^4S 

/"R  4   13471 


LD  21-50OT-8,82 


